Steve McQueen | |
|---|---|
 McQueen at the2024 New York Film Festival | |
| Born | (1969-10-09)9 October 1969 (age 56) London, England, UK |
| Alma mater | Goldsmiths, University of London (BFA) |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1993–present |
| Style | |
| Spouse | Bianca Stigter[1] |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | Full list |
Sir Steve Rodney McQueenCBE (born 9 October 1969) is an English film director, film producer, screenwriter, and video artist. Known for directing films that deal with intense subject matters, he has received several awards including anAcademy Award, twoBAFTA Awards and aGolden Globe Award. He was honoured with theBFI Fellowship in 2016 and wasknighted by QueenElizabeth II in 2020 for services to art and film.[2][3] In 2014, he was included inTime magazine's annualTime 100 list of the "most influential people in the world".[4][5]
McQueen began his formal training studying painting at London'sChelsea College of Art and Design. He later pursued film atGoldsmiths College and briefly atNew York University. Influenced byJean Vigo,Jean-Luc Godard,François Truffaut,Ingmar Bergman, andAndy Warhol, McQueen started making short films.[6] In 1999 McQueen was awarded theTurner Prize for his "range" and "emotional intensity" of his art.[7]
He made his feature length directorial film debut with the historical dramaHunger (2008) which focused on the1981 Irish hunger strike followed by theeroticpsychosexual dramaShame (2011) which exploredsex addiction. He won theAcademy Award for Best Picture directing the historical drama12 Years a Slave (2013). He also directed the contemporary crime thrillerWidows (2018), and theWorld War II dramaBlitz (2024).
For television, he releasedSmall Axe (2020), a collection of five anthology films "set within London'sWest Indian community from the late 1960s to the early '80s". He also directed theBBC documentary seriesUprising (2021) and the documentary filmOccupied City (2023).[8]
McQueen was born in London on 9 October 1969,[9] to a Grenadian father and a Trinidadian mother, both of whom migrated to England.[10][11][12] He grew up inEaling, West London, and went toDrayton Manor High School.[13][14] In a 2014 interview, McQueen stated that he had 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". He said that, when he returned to present some achievement awards, the new head of the school claimed that there had beeninstitutional racism at the time. McQueen added that he wasdyslexic and had to wear an eyepatch because of alazy eye, and reflected this might be why he had been "put to one side very quickly".[12]
He was a keenfootball player, turning out for the West London youth football team St. George's Colts. He tookA-level art atEaling, Hammersmith and West London College, going on to study art and design atChelsea College of Arts and then fine art atGoldsmiths College,University of London, where he first became interested in film. He left Goldsmiths and studied briefly atNew York University'sTisch 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".[15] His artistic influences includeAndy Warhol,Sergei Eisenstein,Dziga Vertov,Jean Vigo,Buster Keaton,Carl Theodor Dreyer,Robert Bresson, andBilly Wilder.[16][17]
McQueen's films as an artist were typically projected onto one or more walls of an enclosed space in anart gallery, and often in black-and-white andminimalistic. He has cited the influence of thenouvelle vague and the films ofAndy Warhol.[18] He often appeared in the films himself. McQueen met the art curatorOkwui Enwezor in 1995 at theInstitute of Contemporary Arts, London. Enwezor became a mentor to him as well as a friend and had a significant influence on McQueen's work.[19]
His first major work wasBear (1993), in which two naked men (one of them McQueen) exchange a series of glances that might be taken to be flirtatious or threatening.[20]Deadpan (1997) is a restaging of aBuster Keaton stunt in which a house collapses around McQueen, who is left unscathed because he is standing where there is a missing window.[21][22]
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 ofManhattan. The resulting films are projected on three walls of an enclosed space. McQueen has also made sculptures such asWhite Elephant (1998), as well as photographs.
He won theTurner Prize in 1999, although much of the publicity went toTracey Emin, who was also a nominee.[23] In 2006, he went to Iraq as an official war artist. The following year he presentedQueen and Country, a piece that commemorated British soldiers killed in theIraq War by presenting their portraits as sheets of stamps.[24] A proposal to have the stamps placed in circulation was rejected by the Royal Mail.[25]
His 2007 short filmGravesend depicted the process ofcoltan refinement and production. It premiered atThe Renaissance Society in the United States.[26]
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In 2008, his first feature-length filmHunger, about the1981 Irish hunger strike, premiered at theCannes Film Festival.[27] McQueen received theCaméra d'Or (first-time director) Award at Cannes, the first British director to win the award.[28] The film was also awarded the inauguralSydney 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".[29] The film also won the 2008 Diesel Discovery Award at theToronto International Film Festival; the award is voted on by the press attending the festival.[30]Hunger also won theLos 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.[31]
McQueen represented Britain at the 2009Venice Biennale.[32] In 2009, it was announced that McQueen has been tapped to directFela, a biopic about the Nigerian musician and activistFela Kuti;[33][34] however, by 2014, the proposal was no longer produced under Focus Features, and while he maintained his role as the main writer, McQueen was replaced byAndrew Dosunmu as the director. McQueen toldThe Hollywood Reporter that the film was "dead".[35]
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In 2011, McQueen's second major theatrical filmShame was released. Set in New York City, it starsMichael Fassbender as a sex addict whose life is suddenly turned upside-down when his estranged sister (Carey Mulligan) reappears. The film was premiered atVenice Film Festival and was shown at theNew York Film Festival and theToronto Film Festival. It received critical acclaim withRoger Ebert ofChicago 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."[36] Ebert would later name it his second best film of 2011.[37]Todd McCarthy ofThe 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 ofsexual addiction that's as all-encompassing as a craving for drugs."[38]
McQueen's next film was12 Years a Slave (2013). Based on the 1853autobiography of the same name bySolomon 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 theAcademy Award for Best Picture in March 2014, becoming the firstBest Picture winner to have a black director or producer.[39][40] The film also won a supporting actressOscar forLupita Nyong'o.[41] On the process of making12 Years a Slave, actor and producerBrad 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."[42]
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In 2012, McQueen debuted a new artistic installation "End Credits", which focuses on the political persecution ofPaul 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 (June 2019) International Performing Arts festival in Amsterdam.[43][44][45][46] In 2014 he announced plans to do a feature film on Robeson[47] with Harry Belafonte.[48]
In 2013, McQueen signed on to developCodes of Conduct, a six-episode limited series forHBO.[49] However, after the pilot episode was shot, HBO shut down production.[50] He also worked on aBBC drama about the lives of black Britons, which follows a group of friends and their families from 1968 to 2014.[51]
In 2015, McQueen shot the video forKanye West's single "All Day".[52] The film was screened atFondation Louis Vuitton in Paris on 7 March 2015 before the first concert of a four-night residency by the American artist, at theFrank Gehry-designed building, began.[53] The film subsequently received its American premiere at theLos Angeles County Museum of Art in July 2015.[54]
In 2018, McQueen directedWidows, which was co-written withGone Girl writerGillian Flynn and based on the 1983 Britishseries of the same name.Viola Davis starred in the heist thriller about four armed robbers who are killed in a failed heist attempt, only to have their widows step up to finish the job.[55] He also directed a one-minute commercial forChanel's men fragranceBleu de Chanel starringGaspard Ulliel.[56]
In 2019, it was announced thatSmall Axe, ananthology series of five films created and directed by McQueen, would be released onBBC One andAmazon Prime Video. Some form of the series had been in development since 2012, and was first announced in 2014.[57][58] The series focuses on "five stories set within London's West Indian community from the late 1960s to the early '80s".[8] Three films in the series premiered at theNew York Film Festival, receiving critical acclaim.[59] The series was released weekly on BBC One and Amazon Prime Video starting in November 2020.[60]
The anthology was a particularly personal project for McQueen, as it portrays the larger community that he grew up in. They are films he felt should have been made "35 years ago, 25 years ago, but they weren't".
There's no way anyone would have given me – or anybody else – any money at that time to make a film about theMangrove Nine. You were not welcome... A lot of people said to me: "Why did you not do this at the beginning of your film career?" But I couldn't have because I didn't have the maturity then, I didn't have the distance, I didn't have the strength. I needed to do other things before I could come back to me.
— McQueen in an interview withDavid Olusoga inSight & Sound[61]
To close the Anthology, McQueen chose to base the final film,Education, on a story from his own life.[61]
The anthology, particularly the filmsMangrove andLovers Rock, received numerous accolades and appeared on several critics' top ten lists.Lovers Rock was the top-ranked film inSight and Sound's best films of 2020, an aggregation of top 10 lists by the magazine's contributors.[62] BothMangrove andLovers Rock were selected forCannes in 2020, and had the festival not been cancelled due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, McQueen would have been the first director to have two films in competition in Cannes in the same year.[63]
According toFilm Stage, Jordan Raup reported that McQueen would direct a WWII documentary titledOccupied City dealing with the occupation of Amsterdam by German forces between 1940 and 1945.[64] It premiered at the2023 Cannes Film Festival.
He returned to feature filmmaking withBlitz, a story about Londoners during "The Blitz" ofWorld War II, which he wrote, directed and produced.[65][66] It received its world premiere as theBFI London Film Festival's opening film on 9 October 2024, screened at the Chicago International Film Festival 22 October 2024, and is scheduled for release inselect cinemas in the United Kingdom and United States on 1 November 2024, followed by a streaming release onApple TV+ on 22 November 2024.
In 2024, McQueen debuted an exhibition of light and sound, titledBass, at theDia Beacon. It was moved to theSchaulager in 2025.[67]
Bear (1993) was McQueen's first major film, presented at theRoyal College of Art in London. Although not an overtly political piece, for many it raised questions about race, sexual attraction to men, and violence. It shows a wrestling match between two men who alternate ambiguous relations and gestures of aggression and erotic attraction. Like all McQueen's early films,Bear is black-and-white, and was shot on16-millimetre film.[68] It was featured in a two-part film exhibition at theSmithsonian InstitutionHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.[69]
Five Easy Pieces (1995) is a short film by McQueen. It follows a woman across a tight-rope; McQueen has stated that he finds a tight-rope walker to be "the perfect image of a combination of vulnerability and strength".[20]
Just Above My Head (1996) is a short film which shares close ties with McQueen's preceding film with the key theme of walking. A man – played by McQueen – is shot in a way so as to crop out his body, but his head appears small at the bottom of the image, rising and falling with his step and coming in and out of frame according to the movement of the camera. As stated byDavid Frankel, the "simultaneous fragility and persistence" is seemingly meant as a metaphor for black life in England as elsewhere.[16][20]
Deadpan (1997) is a four-minute black and white short film directed by and starring McQueen showing a multitude of angles on a reenactment of a stunt fromBuster Keaton'sSteamboat Bill, Jr..Frieze Magazine noted his lack of shoelaces and inferred a multitude of depth and commentary on the prison system.[22] Media Art noted that his use of black and white emulates 1920s film style without "a historicizing strategy or to reinterpret the origins of moving images".[70] The film was exhibited on loop in theMuseum of Modern Art'sContemporary Galleries, 1980-Now from 17 November 2011 to 17 February 2014.[71]
Exodus (1997) is a 65-second colour video that takes the title of a record byBob Marley as its starting point. It records a found event, two black men carrying potted palms whom McQueen followed down a London street, the greenery waving precariously above their heads. Then they get on a bus and leave.[16]
Caribs' Leap/Western Deep (2002), two complementary shorts, were commissioned fordocumenta 11.Carib's Leap explores an event in the Caribbean island of Grenada when, in 1651, the last remaining community of Caribs, resisting French colonialism, chose to leap to their death.Western Deep is a powerful exploration of the sensory experience of theTauTona Gold Mine in South Africa, showing migrant labourers working in dark, claustrophobic environments and the ear-splitting noise of drilling.[72][better source needed]
Pursuit (Version 2) (2005), a 16mm film transferred to video as a front and rear-projected mirror installation on three walls, is a 14-minute film selected for theSharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present.[73] The work originally premiered at the Fondazione Prada, Milan in 2005. Consisting of a sound and video installation with mirrored walls, the imagery is difficult to discern in the chaotic, low-light setting which has been described as disorienting and kaleidoscopic.[74][75]
Running Thunder (2007), an 11-minute short film of a dead horse in a meadow. It was bought by theStedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2014.[76][77]
Ashes (2002–2015) is a two-channel video installation composed of 8mm and 16mm footage filmed by McQueen over ten years, on two separate visits, to the Caribbean island ofGrenada. McQueen first met and filmed a young man named Ashes in 2002 while filming on Grenada forCarib’s Leap, but the footage of Ashes afloat on the prow of a boat went unused.[78] After learning in 2013 that Ashes was murdered by drug dealers, McQueen returned to Grenada to film his burial.[79] Shown back-to-back on a single screen, the final installation juxtaposes vibrant footage of Ashes' life and his untimely death. The soundscape of each film, playing simultaneously, features the calming sounds of water contrasted with the sounds of the tomb construction, and overlapped with the narration of a friend explaining why Ashes was murdered. McQueen has remarked, “Life and death have always lived side by side, in every aspect of life. We live with ghosts in our everyday.”[80]
McQueen is married toBianca Stigter, a Dutch cultural critic, with whom he has a daughter and a son, Alex and Dexter. Since 1997, the McQueens have kept a home in Amsterdam, in addition to their home in London.[1] He was appointedOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the2002 Birthday Honours,[81]Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the2011 New Year Honours for services to the visual arts,[82][83] and wasknighted in the2020 New Year Honours for services to film.[84] McQueen has been twice listed in thePowerlist Top 10 of the most influential Black Britons.[85][86]
McQueen was a fan of English football clubTottenham Hotspur,[12][87] but said in 2014: "I gave up football. It affected my day too much. It's just stupid."[12]
In 2014, McQueen criticised the film industry for ignoring American slavery and theAtlantic slave trade, saying thatWorld War II "lasted five years and there are hundreds and hundreds of films about the second world war and theHolocaust. Slavery lasted 400 years and there are less than 20 [films]."[88]
In June 2020, McQueen accused thefilm andtelevision industry in the United Kingdom ofracism and a lack ofracial diversity.[89] He wrote anop-ed for theGuardian about the "blatant racism" of the British film industry, saying: "I visited a TV-film set in London. It felt like I had walked out of one environment, the London I was surrounded by, into another, a place that was alien to me. I could not believe the whiteness of the set."[90] He said there were not enough opportunities forblack actors in the UK film industry.[91]
In October 2020, he said he experienced racism "every day". He expressed support for theGeorge Floyd protests.[92]
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Hunger | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2011 | Shame | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2013 | 12 Years a Slave | Yes | No | Yes |
| 2018 | Widows | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2024 | Blitz | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Documentary films
| Year | Title | Director | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Occupied City | Yes | Yes |
| Year | Title | Director | Producer | Writer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Small Axe | Yes | Yes | Yes | Anthology series of five films |
| 2021 | Uprising | Yes | Yes | No | Documentary series |
For12 Years a Slave, he won theAcademy Award for Best Picture,[39] theBAFTA Award for Best Film, and theGolden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama.[93] McQueen is the first black filmmaker to win theAcademy Award for Best Picture.[94] He is also the first person to win both an Academy Award and the Turner Prize.[95] McQueen was awarded the Award for Cinematic Production by theRoyal Photographic Society and the Cologne Film Prize in honour of his life's work.[96]
McQueen wasknighted by QueenElizabeth II in the2020 New Year Honours, before receiving his knighthood atWindsor Castle in March 2022.[2] In 2024, he was awarded theRolf Schock Prize.[97] In October 2024, he was awarded ahonorary doctorate from theUniversity of Amsterdam together with his spouseBianca Stigter for bringing "major social issues and political and historical themes to the attention of a large audience".[98]
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