Barry Jenkins on How Black Directors Have Transformed Filmmaking

'The film Moonlight is a subtle, intimate portrait of a young man named Chiron, coming of age during the crack epidemic and struggling to understand his sexuality. The film won Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars, and it made Barry Jenkins one of the most celebrated young directors working today. For Jenkins, today’s flood of Black creativity in Hollywood was helped along by the visibility of the first Black President, Barack Obama. “It meant that, if you walked into any room, this wasn’t going to be the first time someone had to see someone like me walk into that room,” Jenkins says. “And they weren’t going to be surprised or taken aback by the things that we had to say, by the things that we wanted.” Jenkins talks with David Remnick about using light and sound in his films to tell stories. “As a Black storyteller, I’m always just trying to get closer to myself, closer to the truth of who I am, in the creation of these images,” he says. “We’re just building out this tapestry of, hopefully, getting at the ineffable process of understanding or expressing what it is to be Black in the world today”.'