Interview: Yashaddai Owens on "Jimmy"

‘Jimmy’ Review: Woozily Seductive Mood Piece Wanders Europe in Pursuit of James Baldwin’s Spirit

“If not me, who?” said actor Billy Porter in a 2024 Guardian interview, explaining the rationale for his plan to direct and star in a biopic of Black queer author and activist James Baldwin. “Who’s going to tell it better than the Black gay man who embodies that in today’s age?” Porter was right that […]

James Baldwin: “…such mortal danger that I had fled, all the way around the corner, to France”

There is a moment, late in Yashaddai Owens’s Jimmy, when the film stops conjuring James Baldwin and simply lets him talk. For most of its running time this black-and-white reverie keeps the writer wordless — a young man adrift in a Paris of halation and jazz, freedom rendered as texture rather than argument. Then a voice reads from Baldwin himself, and the seductive mood cracks open. “My history in the West had, for its daily effect, placed me …

Interview: Yashaddai Owens on "Jimmy"

The director discusses turning the inspiration of James Baldwin into a film that could describe both his and the author's creative awakening. The post Yashaddai Owens on a Cultural Giant’s First Steps Towards Making a Footprint in “Jimmy” appeared first on The Moveable Fest.

Jimmy — Yashaddai Owens [Review]

Yashaddai Owens’ debut feature Jimmy, though it follows James Baldwin at a pivotal moment in his life, cannot accurately be called a biopic. Rather, in its depiction of a young Baldwin (Benny O. Arthur) meandering around Paris, Owens’ film is more of a loosely narrative collage or a city symphony with Baldwin at its center. [...] The post Jimmy — Yashaddai Owens [Review] appeared first on In Review Online.