I recently had the extreme pleasure of meeting and photographing San Francisco based, independent filmmaker Barry Jenkins at his current home in Noe Valley.  Barry’s work challenges us to look beyond societies shallow prejudices in order to find significant meanings and understanding in our own lives.  His work is beautiful, and poignant and can be viewed below. Additional information about Barry and his films will be published in an upcoming CITY magazine article about independent filmmakers and their lives.

Below are some of his films and his descriptions of them.

MY JOSEPHINE
My first short film, photography by James Laxton, as always. Still my favorite. Written shortly after 9/11, wasn’t actually made for another year because of the way things shook out in school. Inspired by three things: the marquee of a Tallahassee laundromat shortly after 9/11 reading “American Flags Cleaned Free,” an image in my head of two people sitting atop folding tables, and my housemate at the time being obsessed with Napoleon.

We were very young men when we made this film.

A YOUNG COUPLE
For her 30th birthday, my good friend Katrina rented a space and, rather than receive “gifts”, decided to put on a show comprised entirely of things created by her friends, specifically for the 30th anniversary of her birth. Being a filmmaker, I was asked to make a film and what you see here is the result. Katrina and …I had been talking a lot about relationships so my instinct was to chronicle one. I called my friend John and asked him if he and his girlfriend Jenny wouldn’t mind answering a few questions about their relationship. James and I (with the welcome addition of still photographer David Bornfriend) drove over there and shot this thing in the time it takes a San Francisco meter to expire. We only had one real goal, to capture how these two people live in this space, we made sure to shoot every corner of their tiny apartment. The conversation was off the cuff, and I think John and Jenny were both incredibly honest. This was the first thing we made following Medicine and I think there’s a dialogue between the two films. For one, John and Jenny are both IN Medicine if you look close enough And two, this apartment they live in is literally two blocks over from the character Micah’s apartment in the film. We could have been having this conversation with John and Jenny while Micah and Jo’ were drinking tea on his bed post-carousel. I digs that.

TALL ENOUGH
One couple. One quiet Sunday in the city. A lot to talk about. A short film by Barry Jenkins.