English artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien was BOTD in 1960. Born in London to a St Lucian immigrant family, he studied painting and filmmaking at Saint Martin’s School of Art. He co-founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective in 1983, with the aim of developing an independent Black film culture in Britain’s overwhelmingly white film industry. After postgraduate study in Brussels, he rose to prominence with his 1989 docudrama Looking for Langston, a portrait of gay African-American writer Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. His 1991 film Young Soul Rebels, portraying the clash between skinhead, punk and soulboy sub-cultures in 1970s Britain, was shown at the Cannes Festival, where it won the Critics’ Week prize for best film. His later work includes Black Skin, White Mask, a docudrama about Martiniquais civil rights activist Frantz Fanon, and BaadAsssss Cinema, a history of Blaxploitation cinema. His multi-media art installations have been exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Venice Biennale. In 2023, the Tate Modern gallery in London presented a major retrospective of his work. He is in a long-term relationship with writer and curator Mark Nash.