Steve McQueen (director)

Sir Steve Rodney McQueen (born 9 October 1969) is a British film director, film producer, screenwriter, and video artist. He is known for his award-winning film ''12 Years a Slave'' (2013), an adaptation of Solomon Northup's 1853 slave narrative memoir. He also directed and co-wrote ''Hunger'' (2008), a historical drama about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, ''Shame'' (2011), a drama about an executive struggling with sex addiction, and '' Widows'' (2018), an adaptation of the British television series of the same name set in contemporary Chicago. In 2020, he released '' Small Axe'', a collection of five films "set within London's West Indian community from the late 1960s to the early '80s".

For his artwork, McQueen has received the Turner Prize, the highest award given to a British visual artist. In 2006, he produced '' Queen and Country'', which commemorates the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq by presenting their portraits as a sheet of stamps. For services to the visual arts, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011. For ''12 Years a Slave'', he won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the BAFTA Award for Best Film, the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director. McQueen is the first black filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 2014, ''Time'' magazine included McQueen in its annual ''Time'' 100 list of the "most influential people in the world". In 2016, he was granted the British Film Institute's highest honour, the BFI Fellowship. McQueen was knighted in the 2020 New Year Honours, for services to film. In the same year, McQueen was awarded the Award for Cinematic Production by the Royal Photographic Society and is to receive Cologne Film Prize in honor of his life's work this year.

Early years

McQueen was born in London to a Grenadian mother and a Trinidadian father, his parents both having migrated to England.Mains, Asher (11 January 2014)
"Steve McQueen: Grenada’s Future Creatives"
''Now Grenada''. Retrieved 3 March 2014. He grew up in Ealing, West London and went to Drayton Manor High School. In a 2014 interview, McQueen stated that he had a very bad experience in school, where he had been placed into a class for students believed best suited "for manual labour, more plumbers and builders, stuff like that". McQueen stated that, when he returned to present some achievement awards, the new head of the school claimed that there had been institutional racism at the time. McQueen added that he was dyslexic and had to wear an eyepatch because of a lazy eye, and reflected this may be why he was "put to one side very quickly".

He was a keen football player, turning out for the St. George's Colts football team. He took A-level art at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, then studied art and design at Chelsea College of Arts and then fine art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he first became interested in film. He left Goldsmiths and studied briefly at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the United States. He found the approach there too stifling and insufficiently experimental, complaining that "they wouldn't let you throw the camera up in the air". His artistic influences include Andy Warhol, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean Vigo, Buster Keaton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson, and Billy Wilder.

Career

1990s: Short films and visual art

McQueen's films as an artist were typically projected onto one or more walls of an enclosed space in an art gallery, and often in black-and-white and minimalistic. He has cited the influence of the ''nouvelle vague'' and the films of Andy Warhol. He often appeared in the films himself. McQueen met the art curator Okwui Enwezor in 1995 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Enwezor became a mentor to him as well as a friend and had a significant influence on McQueen's work.

His first major work was ''Bear'' (1993), in which two naked men (one of them McQueen) exchange a series of glances that might be taken to be flirtatious or threatening. ''Deadpan'' (1997) is a restaging of a Buster Keaton stunt in which a house collapses around McQueen, who is left unscathed because he is standing where there is a missing window.

As well as being in black-and-white, both these films are silent. The first of McQueen's films to use sound was also the first to use multiple images: ''Drumroll'' (1998). This was made with three cameras, two mounted to the sides, and one to the front of an oil drum, which McQueen rolled through the streets of Manhattan. The resulting films are projected on three walls of an enclosed space. McQueen has also made sculptures such as ''White Elephant'' (1998), as well as photographs.

He won the Turner Prize in 1999, although much of the publicity went to Tracey Emin, who was also a nominee. In 2006, he went to Iraq as an official war artist. The following year he presented '' Queen and Country'', a piece that commemorated the deaths of British soldiers who died in the Iraq War by presenting their portraits as sheets of stamps. A proposal to have the stamps placed in circulation was rejected by the Royal Mail.

His 2007 short film ''Gravesend'' depicted the process of coltan refinement and production. It premiered at The Renaissance Society in the United States.

2000s: Breakthrough as filmmaker

In 2008, his first feature-length film ''Hunger'', about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. McQueen received the Caméra d'Or (first-time director) Award at Cannes, the first British director to win the award. The film was also awarded the inaugural Sydney Film Festival Prize, for "its controlled clarity of vision, its extraordinary detail and bravery, the dedication of its cast and the power and resonance of its humanity". The film also won the 2008 Diesel Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The award is voted on by the press attending the festival. ''Hunger'' also won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for a New Generation film in 2008 and the best film prize at the London Evening Standard Film Awards in 2009.

McQueen represented Britain at the 2009 Venice Biennale. In 2009, it was announced that McQueen has been tapped to direct ''Fela'', a biopic about the Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti.

2010s: Further success

In 2011, McQueen's second major theatrical film ''Shame'' was released. Set in New York City, it stars Michael Fassbender as a sex addict whose life is suddenly turned upside-down when his estranged sister (Carey Mulligan) reappears. The film was premiered at Venice Film Festival and was shown at the New York Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival. It received critical acclaim with Roger Ebert of ''Chicago Sun-Times'' giving the film four out of four stars and describing it as "a powerful film" and "courageous and truthful", commenting that "this is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don't believe I would be able to see it twice." Ebert would later name it his second best film of 2011. Todd McCarthy of ''The Hollywood Reporter'' gave the film a positive review, stating, "Driven by a brilliant, ferocious performance by Michael Fassbender, ''Shame'' is a real walk on the wild side, a scorching look at a case of sexual addiction that's as all-encompassing as a craving for drugs."

McQueen's next film was ''12 Years a Slave'' (2013). Based on the 1853 autobiography of the same name by Solomon Northup, the film tells the story of a free black man who is kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery, working on plantations in the state of Louisiana for twelve years before being released. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in March 2014, becoming the first Best Picture winner to have a black director or producer. The film also won a supporting actress Oscar for Lupita Nyong'o. On the process of making ''12 Years a Slave'', actor and producer Brad Pitt stated: "Steve was the first to ask the big question, 'Why has there not been more films on the American history of slavery?'. And it was the big question it took a Brit to ask."

In 2012, McQueen debuted a new artistic installation "End Credits", which focuses on the political persecution of Paul Robeson, with over 10 hours each of video footage and audio recordings, unsynced. It has been exhibited at a number of locations including the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Perez Art Museum (Miami), and (upcoming June 2019) International Performing Arts festival in Amsterdam. In 2014 he announced plans to do a feature film on Robeson with Harry Belafonte.

In 2013, McQueen signed on to develop ''Codes of Conduct'', a six-episode limited series for HBO. However, after the pilot episode was shot, HBO shut down production. He also worked on a BBC
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