Fireworks Logo

Latest Shorts...

  • It's Okay
  • Here, Hopefully
  • I Hope He Doesn't Kill Me.
  • Oddity In The Blue Crayfish (The)
  • Male Shorts: International V1-7
  • Sperm Donors Wanted!
  • Devil's Workshop App
  • Slay
  • Out to Run: A Tale of Blood Velvet
  • You Will Find Love
  • Give Up the Ghost
  • Polaroid
  • Upon Her Lips: Hold Me Tight
  • 27
  • New Moon
  • Regret to Inform You
  • With You, in Our Town
  • Forward Drive
  • Sea We've Never Seen (The)
  • Fragments of Us
  • Garden of Even
  • Spaceless
  • Elevator Love Story
  • Be Gay Tomorrow
  • Mummy's Boy
  • Solo Orange
  • Senpai, This Can't be Love!
  • Sacrament
  • Expiration Date
  • Coming To
  • What Happens at Sea
  • Being Gay in China
  • Sébastien Delage: Karaokétamine
  • Threedom
  • Melk
  • Hot
  • ¡Ay! Cordero
  • Queer New Orleans: A Journey Beyond Bourbon Street
  • A la carta
  • Yigayo Yuwuerane

Attendant (The)

Country: UK, Language: English, 8 mins

  • Director: Isaac Julien
  • Producer: Mark Nash

CGiii Comment

Let down by some truly amateur visuals...there is a semblance of a good story - an opportunity wasted.


No trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

A young white man visits a gallery of old master paintings. When the museum closes, he stays behind, arousing the sexual fantasies of an older black museum attendant. In one of these fantasies, the 19th-century painting ‘The Slave Trade (Slaves on the West Coast of Africa)’ by French artist François-Auguste Biard metamorphosises into a group of leather-clad gay men.

With an activist’s commitment, Isaac Julien takes a look at the sexual and racist dynamics of power from a cultural-historical perspective. Made with the support of the Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998) in a period under the sway of Thatcherism and the AIDS crisis, the film impressively and poetically explores the topics of imperialism, queer self-determination, lust and death. ra.

Cast & Characters

Thomas Baptiste as Attendant;
Cleo Sylvestre as Conservator;
John Wilson as Visitor;
Paul Bernstock as Player;
Roy Brown as Player;
Andy Denys as Player;
Stuart Hall as Player;
Hugo Irwin as Player;
Christian Jones as Player;
Deighton Kavarne as Player;
Hanif Kureishi as Player;
Edward Lam as Player;
Keith Lennon as Player;
Mike Phillips as Player;
Norman Rosenthal as Player