"It’s hard to imagine a more perfect year for Looking for Langston to be restored to its full elegance. Three decades ago, a young Isaac Julien dreamed of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. He came to New York City to do his research and then returned to the dance clubs and discos of his native London to conjure his visions. The result is a dreamy meditation on the past and the present, with angels loitering on the balconies and club kids disappearing into thin air. Smoke and mirrors? Langston uses every trick in the book to imagine a utopian moment already in danger, where race-crossing from black to white and back unites male bodies in and out of tuxedos, with and without champagne to toast their dalliances. Julien’s prophetic black-and-white film is now a classic. Yet it claims the same fierce poetry, desire, argument, and history now being widely celebrated in the films of Barry Jenkins and Raoul Peck. Julien is still ahead of his time, though: his Langston has the homosexuality missing from I Am Not Your Negro, the naked bodies excised from Moonlight. Pulsating with the urgency of the AIDS crisis and Thatcher’s brutal policies of repression, Langston may well be the most essential film revival of 2017."
– B. RUBY RICH
Text by B. Ruby Rich, writing for Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival. Courtesy Frameline.
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Coinciding with the special screening of Isaac Julien's 1989 film "Looking For Langston" at Tate Britain, London; the film's soundtrack has been released as a 12" vinyl record. The vinyl package includes an outer sleeve printed with silver foil and an extreme gloss finish, an inner sleeve printed with an extreme gloss finish, a 12 x 12" insert, and a 180g vinyl created with the unique "Isaac Julien Blue" PVC.
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Looking for Langston 12" Vinyl Record
Creative Direction by Paul Pensom.
Art Direction by Paul Pensom & Paul Simpson.
Design and Typography by Paul Simpson.
Photography by Isaac Julien.
Vinyl Pressing by The Vinyl Factory.
This project was developed during a Design Internship at Studio Pensom (London, UK).
