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Berkeley Talks: Filmmaker Steve McQueen to Berkeley students: ‘Take a chance’

British filmmaker and video artist Steve McQueen, best known for his Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave, was part of an Arts + Design lecture series

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three people posing at a film screening

From left: Actors Chiwetel Ejiiofor and Lupita Nyong´o, with director Steve McQueen of 12 Years a Slave at the Mill Valley Film Festival. (Photo by Steve Rhodes via Flickr)

In this episode of Berkeley Talks, British filmmaker and video artist Steven McQueen, best known for his Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave, talks about his first experience at Tate Modern in London as an 8-year-old, how he’s never pursued a project for the money and why he thinks experiencing art in the world — and not on a small screen in your hand — is so important.

This March 30 talk was part of UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Thursdays, a lecture series on time-based media art that features leading media artists, curators and thinkers. The series was made possible with support from the Kramlich Art Foundation, run by Berkeley alumna Pamela Kramlich.

Watch a video of the talk on the Arts + Design Vimeo channel.


Listen to other episodes of Berkeley Talks: