Posted by on December 15, 2018 11:18 pm
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Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

Barry Jenkins is in a good mood—this despite the blustery weather and endless shuffle of bodies swarming around the JW Marriott Essex House in Manhattan. It’s early December and he’s in the midst of a major media blitz. The bustle of a late-in-the-year press run-up to Oscar season is not for the faint of heart or those with short attention spans, and Jenkins has faced the media gauntlet over the past few weeks. But his enthusiasm is palpable, and when we sit down to discuss critical buzz, Baldwin and Beale Street, he sounds like a man who is fully immersed in what he has done and what he is doing.

If Beale Street Could Talk, his gorgeous adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, has received widespread acclaim. It centers on Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James), two lovebirds in 1970s Harlem. When Fonny is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, a pregnant Tish does everything in her power to clear his name. The film’s arrived two years after his Oscar-winning drama Moonlight, which announced Jenkins as one of the defining filmmakers of our time.

Jenkins’ propensity for depicting the vulnerability of Black manhood stands out, and he recognizes the power of allowing Black men to be whole—to show the love and the warmth that defines so much of our experiences.

Read more at The Daily Beast.