Film Screening with Issac Julien – Young Soul Rebels

Join the Humanities Institute, the Moving Image Lab, and the Quarry Amphitheater for a screening of Isaac Julien’s 1991 film, Young Soul Rebels. Recently restored to its original director’s cut, the film is a coming-of-age thriller set in London in 1977, the year of the Sex Pistols’ debut and Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee.

It follows two teenage best friends, Chris and Caz, who operate a pirate radio station, the Soul Patrol, and centers on the race conflicts and tensions among three popular youth movements at the time–skinheads, punks, and soulboys. Julien’s first feature, the film won the Semaine de la Critique prize at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival and has garnered international acclaim since its release.

Its soundtrack includes music by Parliament, The O’Jays, War, and Roy Ayers, among others. The event will begin with a brief presentation on the film’s context.

The film will be followed by a Q&A with writer and director, Isaac Julien. Free and open to the public.

Registration required. Filmmaker and installation artist, Isaac Julien KBE RA, was born in 1960 in London.

His work breaks down the barriers between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting, and sculpture, and uniting them to construct powerful visual narratives through multi-screen film installations. His latest work All That Changes You.

Metamorphosis is an immersive ten-screen installation that opened in October 2024 at the Palazo Te in Mantua, Italy and features internationally celebrated actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie. A five-screen version of the installation will have its world premiere at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London in February 2026, and it will be featured at Santa Cruz’s Museum of Art and History in Fall 2027.

Other recent solo exhibitions include Isaac Julien: I Dream a World at the de Young Museum in San Francisco (2025), Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement at MASP in São Paulo (2025), Lessons of the Hour at MoMA in New York (2024), and Once Again… (Statues Never Die) at the Whitney Biennial (2024). In 2018, Julien joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz where he is Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities and leads the Moving Image Lab together with History of Consciousness Professor Emeritus, Mark Nash.

Julien is the 2017 recipient of The Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award, and he was awarded a Kaiserring Goslar Award in 2022 and granted a knighthood as part of the Queen’s Honours List in 2022. This event is presented by the Humanities Institute and the Moving Image Lab, and co-sponsored by Crown College, Merrill College, Porter College, and the Quarry Amphitheater.