Arts & Culture
Quarry Amphitheater to Present Sir Isaac Julien’s Landmark Film Young Soul Rebels
A newly restored director’s cut of Sir Isaac Julien’s acclaimed 1991 film Young Soul Rebels is coming to the Quarry Amphitheater on Wednesday, October 21. Following the screening, Julien, Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities, will join The Humanities Institute (THI) and the Moving Image Lab for a discussion of the film’s origins, its restoration, and how its ideas have evolved across his career.
Young Soul Rebels poster
poster/young soul rebels
A newly restored director’s cut of Sir Isaac Julien’s acclaimed 1991 film Young Soul Rebels is coming to the Quarry Amphitheater on Wednesday, October 21.
Following the screening, Julien, Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities, will join The Humanities Institute (THI) and the Moving Image Lab for a discussion of the film’s origins, its restoration, and how its ideas have evolved across his career.
This event is co-presented by THI, the Moving Image Lab, and the Quarry Amphitheater, with co-sponsorship from Crown College, Merrill College, and Porter College. The screening will begin at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6 p.m. and music by Offshore Sounds, playing records inspired by the film’s acclaimed soundtrack, from 6-7 p.m.
The evening will conclude with a Q&A featuring Julien in conversation with Donna V. Jones (Associate Professor of English, UC Berkeley), providing audiences with an opportunity to hear directly from the filmmaker about the creation, legacy, and continuing relevance of the film. Jones and Julien will open the event with a brief talk about the film.
The event is free and open to the public, with registration required at quarryamphitheater.com.
Set in London in 1977 — the year of the Sex Pistols’ debut and Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee — the film is a coming-of-age thriller built around a murder mystery.
It follows Chris and Caz, two teenage best friends who run a pirate radio station called Soul Patrol, as they navigate the racial tensions and cultural collisions among three of the era’s defining youth movements: skinheads, punks, and soulboys. The film is a vibrant portrait of music, friendship, race, sexuality, and youth culture.
Young Soul Rebels, Julien’s first feature film, won the Semaine de la Critique prize at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, establishing him as an important voice in international cinema, and has earned international acclaim in the decades since. More than three decades after its original release, the film continues to draw renewed attention, including screenings of its restored version at international film festivals. Its soundtrack channels the era’s own sound of resistance and pleasure, featuring music by Parliament, The O’Jays, War, and Roy Ayers.
“Young Soul Rebels remains a remarkable film because of the way it brings music, identity, friendship, and social change together,” said Jose Reyes-Olivas of the Quarry Amphitheater. “Bringing this film to the Quarry—and having Sir Isaac Julien here to engage with the audience—creates a unique opportunity for the Santa Cruz community and the UC Santa Cruz campus to experience an important work of cinema in the setting of one of the region’s most distinctive cultural venues.”
Julien was born in 1960 in London. His work breaks down the barriers between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting, and sculpture, and uniting them to construct powerful visual narratives through multi-screen film installations that explore underrepresented histories and experiences.
His latest work, All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, is an immersive ten-screen installation that opened in October 2024 at the Palazzo Te in Mantua, Italy, and features internationally celebrated actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie. A five-screen version of the installation had its world premiere at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London in February 2026, and it will be featured at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in Fall 2027. Other recent solo exhibitions include Isaac Julien: I Dream a World at the de Young Museum in San Francisco (2025), Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement at MASP in São Paulo (2025), Lessons of the Hour at MoMA in New York (2024), and Once Again… (Statues Never Die) at the Whitney Biennial (2024).
In 2018, Julien joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz, where he is Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities and leads the Moving Image Lab at THI together with History of Consciousness Professor Emeritus Mark Nash. Julien is the 2017 recipient of The Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award, and he was awarded a Kaiserring Goslar Award in 2022 and granted a knighthood as part of the Queen’s Honours List in 2022.