Before we ever got a full teaser trailer for Barry Jenkins‘ new Amazon series, “The Underground Railroad,” the writer-director was keen to share out-of-context videos showcasing the beautiful filmmaking on display. This served to get film fans hyped for the series and to showcase that ‘Underground Railroad’ is something a bit more auteur-istic than your typical series. Well, keeping with that established tradition, Jenkins has now released a long-form series of moving portraits titled “The Gaze.”
Clocking in at more than 50 minutes, “The Gaze” consists of moving portraits of some of the background actors that are showcased in “The Underground Railroad.”
“In my years of doing interviews and roundtables and Q&A’s for the various films we’ve made, there is one question that recurs,” said Jenkins in his essay that accompanies the video on Vimeo. “No matter the length of the piece or the tone of the room, eventually, inevitably, I am asked about the white gaze. It wasn’t until a very particular interview regards ‘The Underground Railroad’ that the blindspot inherent in that questioning became clear to me: never, in all my years of working or questioning, had I been set upon about the Black gaze; or the gaze distilled.”
He added, “I don’t remember when we began making the piece you see here. Which is not and should not be considered an episode of ‘The Underground Railroad.’ It exists apart from that, outside it…What flows here is non-narrative. There is no story told. Throughout production, we halted our filming many times for moments like these. Moments where… standing in the spaces our ancestors stood, we had the feeling of seeing them, truly seeing them and thus, we sought to capture and share that seeing with you.”
For those concerned that Jenkins is spoiling some of the magic of “The Underground Railroad” by sharing this nearly one-hour piece, don’t be. Even though the music comes from Nicholas Britell’s score, the filmmaker assures the viewer that it is a small fraction of the finished work. In addition, the scenes depicted are largely not included in the series. Jenkins said that “maybe five of these shots are in the actual show.” He explained that the entire archive of portraits clocks in at four hours, so this is even just a small percentage of what was captured.
“The Underground Railroad” debuts on Amazon Prime Video on May 14. You can watch the piece below: