Julien achieved prominence in the film world with his 1989 drama-documentary
Looking for Langston, gaining a cult following with this poetic exploration of
Langston Hughes and the
Harlem Renaissance. His following grew when his film
Young Soul Rebels won the
Semaine de la Critique prize for best film at the
Cannes Film Festival in 1991. One of the objectives of Julien's work is to break down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting these to construct a powerfully visual narrative. Thematically, much of his work directly relates to experiences of black and gay identity (he is himself gay), Julien is a documentary filmmaker, and his work in this genre includes
BaadAsssss Cinema, a film on the history and influence of
blaxploitation cinema. In 2014, Julien presented his exhibition
Ten Thousand Waves at
Fotografiska Stockholm. In 2023, the
Tate Gallery in London held a major retrospective of his work titled
What Freedom Is to Me. The exhibition was set to open at the
Bonnefantenmuseum in
Maastrict in March 2024. The
Pérez Art Museum Miami acquired Julien's
Ogun’s Return (Once Again... Statues Never Die) (2022) for the museum collection as part of its PAMM Fund for Black Art in 2024. In this same year, Sir Isaac Julien's films were on view at the Smithsonian
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, and the
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The first, a solo presentation and multichannel installation
Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass, and the latter, the cinematic installation
Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die), a commentary on the life and work of
Alain Locke,
Harlem Renaissance philosopher, in dialogue with
Albert C. Barnes about African art, at the 2024
Whitney Biennial. From April 12 – July 13, 2025, the
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco exhibited
Isaac Julien: I Dream a World. The exhibition was the first retrospective of Julien’s work in the United States and included 10 video installations and several films.
Collaborations Julien cites cultural theorist and sociologist
Stuart Hall as an important influence on his filmmaking. Hall narrates a portion of
Looking for Langston. Julien involves Hall in his work once more in the 1996 film
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask, which tells the story of
Frantz Fanon, the theorist and psychiatrist from Martinique. As a member of the
Sankofa Film and Video Collective, Julien made
The Passion of Remembrance (1986), "which attempts to deal with the difficulties of constructing a documentary history of black political experience by foregrounding questions of chauvinism and homophobia." In 2007, Julien participated in
Performa 07 creating his first evening-length production Cast No Shadow in collaboration with
Rusell Maliphant. ==Other activities==