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Shaka King
American film director, screenwriter, and film producer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Shaka King (born March 7, 1980) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He is best known for directing and co-writing the 2021 biopic Judas and the Black Messiah.
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Biography
An only child, King was born on March 7, 1980[citation needed] in Crown Heights and grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, both in Brooklyn, New York.[1][2] His mother's family was from Barbados and Panama, while his father's family was from Panama.[3] Both parents worked as public school teachers[1] and were "very Afrocentric."[1] King's early education occurred in the neighborhoods of East Harlem and Fort Greene.[3] He attended a predominantly white preparatory school in Bay Ridge during his middle and high school years.[4] It was in high school that he discovered his passion for creative writing.[1]
King studied political science and took his first film production course at Vassar College. After graduating, he practiced screenwriting while working as a youth counselor and tutor.[1] In 2007, he entered a graduate film program at New York University Tisch School of the Arts where he was a student of Spike Lee.[5] King's thesis for his Masters of Fine Arts resulted in the feature film Newlyweeds.[2]
King currently lives in Brooklyn.[6]
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Career
King's debut feature film Newlyweeds is about a free-spirited young couple who live in Bedford-Stuyvesant and who prefer to indulge in marijuana and hashish.[7] The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. He presented his next film, Mulignans, in the USA Narrative Short Films program at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.[8] His 2017 short film LaZercism, starring Lakeith Stanfield, tells of a world in which white people suffer from “racial glaucoma.” [9] Stanfield also appears in King's second feature film, Judas and the Black Messiah, in which Daniel Kaluuya plays the role of Fred Hampton.[1] The feature was nominated for six Academy Awards, including specific nods for King for Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture. More recently, he got a first-look deal with FX Productions to develop television.[10][11]
Angelique Jackson of Variety has noted that King is one of those "Black filmmakers [who] are offering an unvarnished look at the legacy of the 1960s civil rights era, examining America’s tortured history of racism ..."[5]
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Filmography
Short film
Feature film
Television
Awards and nominations
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References
External links
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