Jimmy

Programmers notes: Wow. Jimmy announces a major new voice in film, and we’re proud to welcome to Baltimore Yashaddai Owens’ debut feature so soon after its world premiere at Telluride. Using a handheld camera in the streets of Turkey and France, Jimmy creates a black-and-white, impressionistic study of an early chapter in the life of James Baldwin, steered by emotions, a sense of place, and a belief in the power of images rather than conventional plot points.

This exceptional feature’s photographer-turned-filmmaker origins evokes precedents like RaMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening; Khalik Allah’s Black Mother; and the cinema of Robert Frank. But more than any other film, Jimmy suggests to me a kinship with Melvin Van Peebles’ debut Story of a Three-Day Pass. If that film were to be distilled to the degree that narrative had largely faded into a moving-photograph tone poem about a young Black man alive with the curiosity and liberation of exploring the world beyond the United States for the first time, it would be something quite like Jimmy. Which is to say: this is a film full of art and beauty that people will be studying and enjoying for years to come. 

— Eric Allen Hatch

Director Yashaddai Owens expected for a post-film Q+A.