Barry Alexander Brown

Barry Alexander Brown is an American filmmaker, editor, and screenwriter, born in 1960 in England. Committed from the outset to politically and socially engaged cinema, he co-directed The War at Home (1979) at just 19 years old — a documentary about the anti-war movement in the United States that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. A versatile filmmaker, Barry Alexander Brown is also recognized as one of the most influential editors in contemporary American cinema. A long-time collaborator of Spike Lee since School Daze (1988), he has edited several of Lee’s landmark films, including Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, 25th Hour, Inside Man, and BlacKkKlansman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Editing in 2019. Alongside his work as an editor, Brown has directed several feature films, including Lonely in America (1990), Winning Girls Through Psychic Mind Control (2002), and Son of the South (2020), based on the true story of Bob Zellner, a white civil rights activist in segregated America. Barry Alexander Brown has also worked extensively in music videos and television documentaries, and taught film at Columbia University. His career reflects a consistent commitment to a cinema that is political, popular, and deeply rooted in its time.