Phillip Youmans

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Phillip Michael Youmans (* 2000 in New Orleans ) is an American film actor , director , screenwriter , cameraman and film editor .

Life

Phillip Youmans was born in New Orleans in 2000 . Youmans got his first film role in the comedy film The Sex Teacher directed by Isaac Feder , which hit US theaters in 2014. In his short film Nairobi , which he presented in early 2019, he tells of a family of French-speaking West African immigrants based in Harlem.

Youmans was only 17 years old when he finished work on his debut feature film Burning Cane after leaving high school at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, with actor Wendell Pierce, also from New Orleans, in the lead role. Youmans directed the film, wrote the screenplay, acted as cameraman, and alongside Ruby Kline as one of the film editors.

The main inspiration for the film was the stories and personal experiences he had as a child at the Southern Baptist Church . His mother, Cassandra, and most of his family, grew up in rural South Carolina under a very fundamentalist take on Protestantism, and that was how he and his sister Sydney were raised.

According to Youmans, his identity as an artist was shaped by the two most exciting experiences of his life. On the one hand, this was the detachment from the Baptist Church and, on the other hand, the time he spent with the members of the Black Panther Party in New Orleans, where he met Malik Rahim, among others, who had been doing voluntary work in housing projects and programs for criminal offenses African American engaged. Youmans said he wanted to tell down-to-earth, multidimensional black stories, even though his creative identity wasn't always determined by his skin color.

Burning Cane premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in late April 2019 . There the 19-year-old director was awarded the Founders Award, the main prize of the festival. This makes Youmans the first African American director to receive this award and the youngest to present a film at the Tribeca Film Festival.

A documentary by Youmans about Grammy-nominated jazz musician Jon Batiste , entitled The Vanguard: Days with Jon Batiste, is slated for release in late 2019. Next, Youmans wants to make a film about the arm of the Black Panthers in New Orleans, which was made in 1978 and with whose later members he conducted numerous interviews over the course of several years. Commenting on the film project, Youmans says: “A lot of people didn't even know that New Orleans had a Panther Chapter, and I just want to shed some light on the darkness, especially because the city was de facto subject to the Jim Crow Act as early as 1970 , but nonetheless a maladjusted black community thrived, even though the police made their life hell. "

Youmans currently lives in New York City and attends the Tisch School of the Arts there .

Filmography (selection)

  • 2017: Ivory (short film)
  • 2019: Nairobi (short film)
  • 2019: Burning Cane

Awards

Black Reel Award

  • 2020: Nomination for Best Independent Film ( Burning Cane )
  • 2020: Nomination for Best Screenplay Debut (Burning Cane)

Gotham Award

  • 2019: Nomination for the best young director (Burning Cane)

Tribeca Film Festival

  • 2019: Received the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature (Burning Cane)
  • 2019: Award for Best Cinematography - US Narrative Feature Film (Burning Cane)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Phillip Youmans. In: talkhouse.com. Retrieved May 4, 2019.
  2. ^ Jake Coyle: 19-year-old director wins top award at Tribeca Film Festival. In: Business Insider, May 3, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b Phillip Youmans: What It Means to Humanize. In: talkhouse.com, April 24, 2019.
  4. ↑ Hunter Harris: The Tribeca Film Festival Just Gave Its Biggest Award to a 19-Year-Old. In: Vulture, May 4, 2019.
  5. ↑ 19-Year Old Director Wins Top Award at Tribeca Film Festival. In: The Washington Post, May 4, 2019.
  6. ↑ Jamie Broadnax: Congrats to 19-Year-Old Filmmaker Phillip Youman's Sweeping Film Awards at Tribeca. In: blackgirlnerds.com, May 2, 2019.
  7. ↑ a b Tambay Obenson: How a 19-Year-Old From New Orleans Made the Most Exciting Black Film So Far This Year. In: indiewire.com, May 2, 2019.
  8. ^ Wilson Morales: 20th Annual Black Reel Awards - Nominees Announced. In: blackfilm.com, December 11, 2019.
  9. ↑ Here are the Winners of the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival's Juried Awards. In: tribecafilm.com. Retrieved May 4, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Youmans, Phillip
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Youmans, Phillip Michael (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film actor, director, screenwriter, cameraman and film editor
DATE OF BIRTH 2000
PLACE OF BIRTH New Orleans , United States