MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY 
MOONLIGHT 
IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK 
With his cast and crew in tow in front of a rapturous audience Tuesday night, Oscar-winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins brought his latest film, an adaptation of author James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk,” to the New York Film Festival for its U.S. premiere at the world-famous Apollo Theater. The setting was all too appropriate.“James Baldwin was born and raised in Harlem. ['Beale Street'] was set in Harlem. It was filmed in Harlem. The first time it was shown in...
PASTEL
Barry
Jenkins
Film Director
It took just one movie to turn Jenkins into a hot Hollywood director. The massive, groundbreaking success of 2016’s “Moonlight,” the Oscar-winner about a young African-American man growing up gay, positioned him as a top-tier talent in the industry, with his new cachet leading to a string of high-profile projects. First up is this fall’s “Moonlight” follow-up, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” an adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel about a 1970s romance and the fallout of a false arrest in Harlem. On the small screen, he’s signed with Amazon to write and direct a one-hour series based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel “The Underground Railroad.” At 2018’s TIFF, he equated his brand of quietly percolating fare to the big-budget releases, saying they have “blockbuster emotions.”
