Shaka King | |
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 King at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival | |
| Born | March 7, 1980 New York City, U.S. |
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| Years active | 2009–present |
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 .
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]
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]
Short film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Mariachi | No | No | Yes |
| Cocoa Loco | Yes | No | No | |
| 2010 | Herkimer DuFrayne 7th Grade Guidance Counselor | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2015 | Mulignans | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2017 | LaZercism | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Feature film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Newlyweeds | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2021 | Judas and the Black Messiah | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Television
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | High Maintenance | Yes | Yes | 2 episodes |
| 2016-17 | People of Earth | Yes | No | 5 episodes |
| 2018 | Random Acts of Flyness | Yes | Yes | Directed 1 episode, wrote 2 episodes |
| 2019-20 | Shrill | Yes | No | 4 episodes |
| Year | Award | Title | Category | Result | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | NAACP Image Awards | Shrill | Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series | Nominated | [12] |
| 2021 | Academy Awards | Judas and the Black Messiah | Best Picture | Nominated | |
| Best Original Screenplay | Nominated | ||||
| 2021 | Producers Guild of America Awards | Best Theatrical Motion Picture | Nominated | ||
| 2021 | Writers Guild of America Awards | Best Original Screenplay | Nominated | ||
Fred Hampton Jr. is an American political activist, based in Chicago. He is the president and chairman of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee and the Black Panther Party Cubs. He is the only child of Fred Hampton, the Black Panther Party leader assassinated by police in Chicago on December 4, 1969, with his fiancée, now known as Akua Njeri.
Daniel Kaluuya is an English actor and filmmaker. His work encompasses both screen and stage, and his accolades include an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. In 2021, he was named among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
Samuel Bazawule, known professionally as Blitz Bazawule and Blitz the Ambassador, is a Ghanaian filmmaker, author, visual artist, rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer.
Ryan Kyle Coogler is an American filmmaker. He is a recipient of four NAACP Image Awards and four Black Reel Awards, and has been nominated for two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award.
LaKeith Lee Stanfield is an American actor. He made his feature film debut in Short Term 12 (2013), for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He received further recognition for his roles in the films Get Out (2017), Sorry to Bother You (2018), Uncut Gems (2019), Knives Out (2019), and Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), the lattermost of which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Hannah Margalit Fidell is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Her directorial debut was the drama film A Teacher (2013). She also wrote and directed the romantic drama film 6 Years (2015) and the comedy film The Long Dumb Road (2018).
Sterlin Harjo is an American Seminole filmmaker. He has directed three feature films, a documentary, and the FX comedy drama series Reservation Dogs, all of them set in his home state of Oklahoma and concerned primarily with Native American people and content.
Eliza Hittman is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer from New York City. She has won multiple awards for her film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which include the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award—both for best screenplay.
Kenny Lucas and Keith Lucas, collectively referred to as The Lucas Brothers, are American identical twin brothers who work together as writers, filmmakers, producers, actors, and comedians.
Judas and the Black Messiah is a 2021 American biographical crime drama film directed and produced by Shaka King, who wrote the screenplay with Will Berson, based on a story by the pair and Kenny and Keith Lucas. The film is about the betrayal of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late-1960s Chicago, by William O'Neal, an FBI informant. Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fishback, Ashton Sanders, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Lil Rel Howery, Algee Smith, Dominique Thorne, and Martin Sheen also star.
Akua Njeri is an American writer, activist and former member of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Njeri was present at the December 4, 1969, police raid in which her fiancé, Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark were killed at the Chicago apartment she and Hampton shared. She is the mother of their son Fred Hampton Jr., born after his father's assassination.
Sevak "Sev" Ohanian is an American film producer and screenwriter. He is best known as the co-writer and producer of the films Searching and Run, as well as executive producer on the film Judas and the Black Messiah. He is also one of the founders of Proximity Media.
William O'Neal was an American FBI informant in Chicago, Illinois, where he infiltrated the local Black Panther Party (BPP). He is known for being the catalyst for the 1969 police/FBI assassination of Fred Hampton, head of the Illinois BPP.
Channing Godfrey Peoples is an American writer, director, and producer. Her feature film directorial debut Miss Juneteenth received critical acclaim.
"Fight for You" is a song by H.E.R. written for the 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah. H.E.R. co-wrote it with Tiara Thomas and co-composed and co-produced it with D'Mile. RCA Records released it as a digital single on February 4, 2021.
The 21st Annual Black Reel Awards ceremony, presented by the Foundation for the Augmentation of African-Americans in Film (FAAAF) and honoring the best films of 2020, took place on April 11, 2021. During the ceremony, FAAAF presented the Black Reel Awards in 23 categories. The film nominations were announced on February 18, 2021, and led by One Night in Miami... with 15 nominations.
Will Berson is an American screenwriter living in Los Angeles, California. He wrote the screenplay and story of Judas and the Black Messiah with Shaka King, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2021.
Isabel Sandoval is a Filipino filmmaker and actress who lives in the United States. She directed the films Señorita (2011), Aparisyon (2012) and Lingua Franca (2019). She also directed a short film called Shangri-La (2021) as part of the Miu Miu's Women's Tales series of female-directed short films commissioned by the fashion brand.
Judas and the Black Messiah is the soundtrack to the identically named 2021 biographical crime-drama film. Two soundtracks — Judas and the Black Messiah , consisting of film score composed by Mark Isham and Craig Harris, and Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album, consisting of incorporated film songs, were released by WaterTower Music and RCA Records on February 12, 2021, the same day as the film's theatrical and premium video-on-demand release on HBO Max. The soundtrack and score received positive critical acclaim. The original song "Fight for You", which was featured in the film score album, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 93rd Academy Awards.
Charlese Antoinette Jones is an American costume designer for film and television. She is best known for her work on Raising Dion, Astronomy Club: The Sketch Show and Judas and the Black Messiah.
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