Nigerian-British filmmaker Nkiru Jenn is the director of Beyoncé’s award-winning “Brown Skin Girl” video. Brown Skin Girl won the ‘Best Music Video’ at the 2021 Grammys, held on Sunday, March 14.
Here are some facts to know about her.
1. Nkiru Jenn was born and raised in Peckham, South London.
2. She started making short films in her teens, breaking into the industry at age 15 with her first commission, which was made with the BBC.
3. She studied law before leaving London to study film directing at Howard University in Washington, DC.
4. In 2014, her directorial debut, En Vogue, an experimental high-energy short film about New York’s voguing and ballroom underground subculture, was released.
5. In 2017, her second film, ‘Rebirth Is Necessary,’ a dreamlike art film centered on the magic and dynamism of Blackness past, present, and future. The film went on to win the Canal+ award at the Clermont Ferrand Film Festival and Best Documentary at the London Independent Film Festival and was a nominee for the 2018 Best Short Film Award at the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival and also the 2018 Voice of a Woman Award at Cannes.
6. In 2018, Nkiru was the second unit director of Ricky Saiz’s music video for Beyoncé and Jay-Z, “Apeshit,” which received 8 nominations at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards.
7. She was named one of the 200 women redefining the creative industry by The Dots in 2018.
8. Nkiru has now worked on three projects with Beyoncé, including an Ivy Park campaign for Adidas and, most recently, “Black Is King.”
9. She was the only woman director outside of Beyoncé on the ‘Black Is King’ project.
10. Nkiru’s 2019 documentary, “Black to Techno,” centers on the origins of techno music in Detroit’s Black community in the 1980s.
