True North

• 2004, 16mm, color, DVD transfer, sound, 14’
• director Isaac Julien
• starring Vanessa Myrie, Magni duc Bcen Vu, Ernesto G. Valeriano, Didsdado C. Quiamco
• voice-over Josette Simon
• photography Nina Kellgren
• sound and music designer Graham Headicar
• editing Adam Finch
• producer Philippa Thomas/Helen Weil
• production London Thomas / Thomas Films, Iceland Truenorth Productions
• co-produced by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin/Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal;
• Centre Pompidou Service Nouveaux Médias, Paris/Linda Pace/Mr & Mrs Appel

Presented at Lo schermo dell'arte 2012

The three featured films started out as multi-channel audiovisiual installations projected on large screens, and are linked by their settings – architectural and natural landscapes – which are both background and thematic motives, closely bound to the presence of a wandering enigmatic figure incarnated by actress Vanessa Myrie. While Baltimore constitutes a selfstanding work, True North and The Leopard (which in the installational version was titled Western Union: Small Boats, 2007) belong to a trilogy.

True North liberally adapts the story of Afro-American explorer Matthew Henson, who was among the first to reach the North Pole with Robert E. Peary. Filmed among the glaciers and seas around Iceland and in the ice hotel at Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, Julien’s film tackles the theme of polar expeditions, drawing inspiration from an interview with Henson and from Lisa E. Bloom’s book Gender On Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions (1993), an interdisciplinary study of polar expeditions from a feminist perspective.

Isaac Julien

Artist and filmmaker, Julien was nominated for the Turner Prize (2001) and he was the recipient of the Performa Award (2008), the prestigious Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (2001) and the Frameline Lifetime Achievement Award (2002). His work Paradise Omeros was presented as part of Documenta11 in Kassel (2002) and in 2003 he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Kunstfilm Biennale in Cologne for his single-screen version of Baltimore.

Isaac Julien was visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Schools of Afro-American and Visual Environmental Studies and a faculty member of the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Arts. He was also a research fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is currently a professor of Media Art at Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, Germany. Julien is represented in museum and private collections throughout the world, including Tate, Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York,

Centre Pompidou, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and the Brandhorst.

www.isaacjulien.com