Barry Jenkins Presents The Underground Railroad

March 15–17, 2024

Barry Jenkins presents his brilliant adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning magnum opus in person at BAMPFA this March. In this essential reckoning with America’s history of slavery and white supremacy, Jenkins renders Whitehead’s uncanny, antebellum American South with profound sensitivity and exquisite artistry.

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Past Films

The Underground Railroad: Chapter 10
- Sunday, March 17 5 PM
Barry Jenkins presents his brilliant adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning magnum opus in person. In this essential reckoning with America’s history of slavery and white supremacy, Jenkins renders Whitehead’s uncanny, antebellum American South with profound sensitivity and exquisite artistry.

Barry Jenkins and Brandi Thompson Summers in Conversation
The Gaze
- Sunday, March 17 11:30 AM
Barry Jenkins
United States, 2021
Untethered from narrative, immaculately costumed, and on location, actors from The Underground Railroad look back at the camera, as if through time and history, emphasizing their existence while compelling viewers to consider the foundations of their own point of view.

Introduced by Barry Jenkins
The Underground Railroad: Chapters 8 & 9
- Sunday, March 17 1:00 PM
Barry Jenkins presents his brilliant adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning magnum opus in person. In this essential reckoning with America’s history of slavery and white supremacy, Jenkins renders Whitehead’s uncanny, antebellum American South with profound sensitivity and exquisite artistry.

Barry Jenkins, Joi McMillon, and Roshanak Kheshti in Conversation
The Underground Railroad: Chapters 3 & 4
- Saturday, March 16 3 PM
Barry Jenkins presents his brilliant adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning magnum opus in person. In this essential reckoning with America’s history of slavery and white supremacy, Jenkins renders Whitehead’s uncanny, antebellum American South with profound sensitivity and exquisite artistry.

Barry Jenkins, Mychal-Bella Bowman, and Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers in Conversation
The Underground Railroad: Chapters 5, 6 & 7
- Saturday, March 16 7 PM
Barry Jenkins presents his brilliant adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning magnum opus in person. In this essential reckoning with America’s history of slavery and white supremacy, Jenkins renders Whitehead’s uncanny, antebellum American South with profound sensitivity and exquisite artistry.

Barry Jenkins, Joi McMillon, Mychal-Bella Bowman, and Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers in Conversation
The Underground Railroad: Chapters 1 & 2
- Friday, March 15 7 PM
Barry Jenkins presents his brilliant adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning magnum opus in person. In this essential reckoning with America’s history of slavery and white supremacy, Jenkins renders Whitehead’s uncanny, antebellum American South with profound sensitivity and exquisite artistry.

Barry Jenkins, Joi McMillon, and Damon Young in Conversation

Barry Jenkins Presents The Underground Railroad

March 15–17, 2024

“An extraordinary adaptation: hallucinatory, magical, allegorical and yet permanently in the pursuit of historical and eternal truths, the resurrection of lost perspectives and the uplifting of unheard voices.” —Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

An essential reckoning with American history, The Underground Railroad revolves around the flight of Cora, a young enslaved woman, from the Georgia plantation where she was born and her pursuit by a relentless slave catcher. Cora is aided by a network of people who provide a subterranean train service for fugitives. Barry Jenkins, who brilliantly adapted Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning magnum opus for the screen, thanked Whitehead for giving him back his childhood with the novel, remarking that he remembers being a kid and “hearing the words underground railroad and literally seeing—not even imagining, seeing—my ancestors building trains and...

Jenkins renders Whitehead’s uncanny, parallel-universe antebellum American South with exacting realism, grounding its fantastical elements with a meticulous attention to the physical world the characters traverse. The sophisticated precision and clarity of the sound design—from the hum of insects to the creak of wooden floorboards and the steam hiss and metal clank of locomotives—creates a sense of space. It also suggests the heightened sense of awareness—required for survival—of the fugitives and the enslaved. Cinematographer James Laxton’s camera deliberately scans and circles the action, allowing viewers time to absorb and appreciate the details of landscapes, interiors, and haunting, cavernous tunnels, as well as the powerful, affecting performances.

Moving through five states, all of which suggest different eras from antebellum through reconstruction, The Underground Railroad demonstrates various forms of racist exploitation and white supremacy to which Black people were, and too often still are, subjected, along with the strategies of resistance and self-preservation developed in response. As Reggie Ugwu noted in the New York Times, as well as confronting the physical violence of slavery, Jenkins’s adaptation addresses “something subtler, about the psychic and emotional scourge, and the unfathomable spiritual strength required for any individual—let alone an entire people—to have come out alive.”

The epic scope of the narrative—which includes the stories of numerous protagonists with whom Cora interacts—suits the episodic form, and having it available to stream allows viewers expansive access to this indispensable work. But Jenkins’s exquisite artistry also demands the opportunity for attentive viewing in a theatrical context. BAMPFA welcomes Jenkins to present and discuss all ten episodes this March.

—Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator

Special admission:
General: $15
BAMPFA members: $11
UC Berkeley students: $7
UC Berkeley faculty and staff, non-UC Berkeley students, disabled persons, ages 65+, and 18 & under: $12

BAMPFA’s second-feature discount does not apply to these programs. The added screening of The Gaze on March 17 is regularly priced and eligible for the additional-feature discount.

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Barry Jenkins Presents The Underground Railroad is copresented by The Townsend Center for the Humanities.

Thanks to Stephen Best, Rebecca Egger, The Townsend Center For the Humanities; Akiva Griffith, Amazon Studios; Tiye Amenechi.

Barry Jenkins Presents The Underground Railroad

March 15–17, 2024

Past Films

The Underground Railroad: Chapter 10

The Gaze

The Underground Railroad: Chapters 8 & 9

The Underground Railroad: Chapters 3 & 4

The Underground Railroad: Chapters 5, 6 & 7

The Underground Railroad: Chapters 1 & 2