While filming his adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad, director Barry Jenkins recognized the beauty of the show’s background actors and their power to evoke ancestral memory within him. In The Gaze (2021, 52 mins.), Jenkins presents moving-image portraits of these actors, inspired by the work of artist Kerry James Marshall, and set to composer Nicholas Britell’s haunting score. Dressed in period-inspired costumes amidst the Prime Video series’ mid-nineteenth-century settings, the actors gaze directly at the viewer, evincing a mix of vulnerability, defiance, and candor. Join us for the first in-person screening in California of The Gaze, followed by a talk back with Jenkins, award-winning film editor Joi McMillon, and noted film critic and host of The Treatment, Elvis Mitchell.