The dispute about Black women’s right to anger, revenge, and truth has been the central sparring ground of cinematic conversation since the screen adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple premiered in 1985. The work’s debut—in text and on screen— coincided with a moment of hypervisibility for Black women artists across mediums: Gwendolyn Brooks became the first Black person named U.S. Poet Laureate in 1984; Toni Morrison and Alice Walker won Pulitzer Prizes for their world-shifting novels Beloved (1988) and The Color Purple (1983); Zora Neale’s Hurston work was reissued in 1985 after deep championing by Walker; Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf transformed the stage1 in the late 1970s; Pam Grier owned the 1970s as cinema’s first woman action star.

The Color Purple, directed by Steven Spielberg, was the most discussed and controversial cinematic work of its day. The film—Hollywood’s first attempt at the Black woman’s picture— centers on Celie, a Black woman sexually, mentally, and physically abused by Black men for most of her life. The dearth of widely recognized messages that spoke the emotional language of Black women means that this beloved work being helmed by the white and male Spielberg was a prime battleground for heated discussion on all sides.

Black women were left clinging, as often happens, to the parts of The Color Purple, the motion picture, that spoke to us. "Black women should not be sacrificed for Black men's pride. Let the film roll," one Black woman viewer told the New York Times2 in January 1986. In this moment of mass cultural celebration of Black women artists, the film, like the novel that came before it, was criticized for being “the most racist depiction of Black men since The Birth of a Nation.” and “the most anti-Black family film of the modem film era,” by Tony Brown, the host of the well-regarded PBS program.3 His sentiment was echoed by other prominent Black male figures of the day. Spike Lee, while interviewed by Film Comment in 19864, suggests Hollywood’s impetus to adapt the work was because Black men were depicted as “one-dimensional animals.” He continues to say “the quickest way for a Black playwright, novelist, or poet to get published has been to say that Black men are shit. If you say that, then you are definitely going to get media, your book published, your play done - Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker.” A point, the writer Mel Watkins expanded upon in The New York Times, “Those Black women writers who have chosen Black men as a target have set themselves outside a tradition that is nearly as old as Black American literature itself. They have, in effect, put themselves at odds with what seems to be an unspoken but almost universally accepted covenant among Black writers.”5

The Color Purple’s 40-year-war—and by effect the war faced by the agency of Black women artists– is a sparring between those who believe the movie’s themes — misogynoir, sexual abuse, and sexual agency — aired out intracommunity issues that are best left to minimization and internal conversation and those who see art as a tool to express the dynamic range of Black women’s lives. 1985’s war remains the battlelines drawn today as this month’s release of Is God Is (2026)6 re-awakens the storm with the same points echoed across time.

Two pressing questions emerge. The first: Are Black women traitors to the race when the violence waged against us comes from those we hold dear? When Black women directors, artists, and writers hold a mirror to our experiences, intracommunity shame isn’t our guide… the truth is. To be human is to have the ability to wage every possibility of life—the strife, the bliss, the hurt—that is the beauty and the terror. When Black women artists create worlds that center wholly on the Black life, Black antagonists are a natural point of creation. Black women artists illustrating the violence waged against women and children isn’t a direct condemnation of men, but a commendation of patriarchal order; a belief that unity between genders—and those beyond it— are only possible when Black men are the heroes of the tale. In order to create a victor, you have already submitted yourself to the belief that there was someone conquered.

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The second pressing question: What is the film’s responsibility to Black people? By denying Black women agency over their storytelling (as writer, director, or artist), we suggest, again, that silence–protecting a sanctified Black image– is more urgent than artistic expression of our life and the pain we experience. The question also does not have one solution and each artist is working it out for themselves.

As Audre Lorde poses to us:

Whether we speak or not,
The machine will crush us to bits—
and we will also be afraid

Your silence
will not
protect you

Finally, on writing The Color Purple, Alice Walker notes, “It is, in the end, the saving of lives that we writers are about… We do it because we care… We care because we know this: the life we save is our own.”

The life we save is our own.

In this moment of Black women’s revenge being the topic of the day, I’m reflecting on other films across time that speak to this thematic range. Below are some films you can watch on Black Film Archive now. All of these films move beyond simply being revenge tales, but the ponderance of revenge is a sweet entry point.

Black Girl (1972) dir. Ossie Davis

Black Girl, based on J.E. Franklin’s stageplay of the same name, is an atypical revenge story as it centers Black girls on the edge of breaking through–to college, to something real— whose dreams are almost thwarted by the pressures of living and competing with each other for their mother’s affection. Stars the great Claudia McNeil, Leslie Uggams, and Peggy Pettitt.

Sugar Hill (1974) dir. Paul Maslansky

After the mob kills her boyfriend, Diana (an infectious Marki Bey) takes revenge into her own hands by enlisting a voodoo high priestess’s curse to raise an army of the dead.

Coffy (1973) dir. Jack Hill

By day Coffy (Pam Grier) is a nurse, by night she’s carrying out a personal vendetta against those who got her sister addicted to drugs killing dealers and anyone else on her path to justice.

When Sinners was released last April, its success could be measured in more than colossal box office returns. It was discussed, memed, and argued over with obsessive zeal, as audiences rewatched it in theaters and debated its genre allusions, religious symbolism, and supposed culture-war positions. Impressively, the film stayed at the forefront of discourse throughout the summer, when it was available to watch at home, and into awards season, even as new films premiered at festivals and seemed to overshadow Sinners’ prestige. Ryan Coogler’s American horror film, it was decided, was the Hollywood triumph story of the year.

But once Sinners became the most nominated movie in Academy Awards history, conversations about the film reached a fevered crescendo within Black audiences. Discussions, on social media and among film critics, moved from obsessively parsing the story and its blockbuster appeal, to debating what the movie means for Black film and Blackness writ large. As more awards rolled in — including Original Screenplay at the BAFTAs and a Lead Actor upset by Michael B. Jordan at the SAG awards — Sinners became a lightning rod illuminating a belief held by Black audiences throughout the medium’s history: that supporting Black film is a civic duty. Its awards success was starting to be positioned as retribution after questionable coverage of its initial victories from the likes of Variety and other white power structures that have a reputation for devaluing Blackness. Sinners’ potential Oscar wins now signal the gravity of Black progress, within and beyond the industry; its potential Oscar losses carry a glint of cruelty.

But this thinking involves a strange exaltation of the very white power structures that have always threatened or co-opted Black artistry. Speaking of the BAFTAs, that institution had to apologize this year for allowing the n-word, shouted by Tourette syndrome activist John Davidson, to make it to broadcast on the BBC. Sinners actors Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting an award at the ceremony when Davidson’s tic occurred, and as Lindo explained to Vanity Fair, they “did what they had to do,” but wished “someone from BAFTA spoke to us afterward,” referring to the fact that no one from the British Academy apologized to them personally that night. It was hard not to recognize the moment as another example of the white establishment delighting in sipphoning the popularity of Black art but doing nothing to consider and support Black artists.

The Oscars themselves were created in 1927 by MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer to pacify Tinseltown’s growing desire to support the labor of artists. As studios gulped down profits, talent below and above the line began to demand adequate shares of the pie. So the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was born as a mechanism to numb their ambitions and sow division amongst the labor force in Hollywood. “I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them,” Mayer said. “If I got them cups and awards, they’d kill themselves to produce what I wanted.” The ceremony has remained a smug political distraction ever since. In 1990, when an LA Times editorial questioned the Academy’s snubbing of Do the Right Thing, then-president Karl Malden wrote a letter to the editor: “The members of this academy have done more to combat racial hatred and racial misunderstanding than all the editorial writers in all the newspapers in the world.”

Black people have been protesting that distraction and the films it festoons with glory since its early days. When Gone with the Wind sanitized the Confederacy, Black audiences picketed theaters, wrote essays and opinion pieces in Black publications, and called attention to the abhorrent treatment of Hattie McDaniel, who was segregated at the 1940 ceremony even though she won Best Supporting Actress. The Oscars were seen by Black audiences as frivolous, behind-the-times, and empty in the decades after, through 1996, when Reverend Jesse Jackson called for a protest of the Academy Awards, citing systemic racism at the institution’s core.

Read the full article on Vulture.com. Have a question you’d like us to answer for tomorrow’s live conversation? Leave it in the comments.

Happy Black History Month! I hope this month is generous to you all. A few weeks ago I received an email from a subscriber who, looking at fascism continuing to reign in the United States, asked: “What does Black film do for me right now?” It is a fair, urgent question… I replied:

Knowledge building, radicalism, is not a one-to-one act; It is an enduring practice that requires full commitment from us. The struggles we face have been documented across time in text and yes, cinema. All tools in our arsenal– including films– help us in our fight against fascism’s reign. The magic of film (and yes, a danger, too) is that it can transport you to other worlds. It is a tool of consistent imagination, wonder, and documentation— we need to hold fast to that as acts of wonder and inspiration are weaponized against us. Films are confrontations of constant invention, you do not have to believe every myth presented on screen but allow yourself to learn how the myths are being made, give yourself space to fully understand how our pain, struggle, and hopes are interconnected across time. We need to grieve, we need to feel beyond ourselves… cinema, from the beginning of its creation, has been a tool to unlock that. We have the power to hear directly from those who have walked our path and those who walked the path we don’t have the courage to face; we cannot underestimate the power of carrying their momentum forward. We ultimately do ourselves a disservice when we assume there is only one solution– one method of success to our shared goal of liberation…let us try them all as long as they help us believe sincerely change is possible, tangible.

As this year marks the 100th celebration of Black History Month1, I am thinking of why Black History Month was created: to commemorate the struggles, lives, and achievements that animate Black history. It seems to me that our task remains animating the full history. We are the keepers and the torchbearers. For my sixth2 annual 28 Films for the 28 Days of Black History Month list, the films center fundamental Black stories and truths. The films below serve as a reminder that the function of tyranny is to seize our imaginations of tomorrow.

The films on this year’s list are in conversation with the dreams planted at birth to remind us that the only way to build a better Black tomorrow is to imagine it. Art is here to be a guide to construct new modes of understanding, communicating, and believing. In this moment of collective reckoning, Black cinematic history remains a prism of possibility that reflects the times and illuminates the possibilities of our beings. We can conceive of a world outside of the constraints placed upon us. You can find the full list on Black Film Archive here and log the films on Letterboxd here.

Black Moderates and Black Militants (1969)

The debate to end racial oppression is intertwined with the debate of capitalism, fascism, and the belief that a future that serves us is possible. In “Black Moderates and Black Militants” Chicago-based members of the Black Panthers, including the future Congressman Bobby Rush, debate the issue of their times and our times with a community steward.

Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones (1990) dir. Ellen Weissbrod

Quincy Jones, the most consequential artist of our times, orchestrated the soundtrack of our lives. But who is the man behind the music? “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones” interviews the artists and collaborators who were his vessel of creation—Miles Davis, Flavor Fav, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin and countless others–to lead a sonic, visual, and cultural revolution.

Aimé Césaire, Un homme une terre (1976) dir. Sarah Maldoror

An intimate portrait of Aimé Césaire— Martinican poet, playwright, and politician whose worked centered on the decolonization of Africa’s French colonies— unfolding through pointed conversation with director, Sarah Maldoror, and scenes of how the poet lived.

T.V. Transvestite (1982) dirs. Michele Capozzi and Simone de Bagno

An enduring, intimate look at the pageantry and circumstance of the Harlem drag scene pre-AIDS. Pepper LaBeija, Tracy Africa, and Nichelle LaBeija twirl us into their dynamic world years before “Paris is Burning” later made its debut. Considered lost for decades, the intimate portrait is one to urgently behold.

Black Liberation (1967) dir. Édouard de Laurot

“This film is not a documentary ‘on the negroes’ but an authentic outcry from the Black people in America… Rather than a posteriori reconstruction of history, it was made as an act of engagement in its onward thrust” reads the opening card of this portrait of our struggle. Narrated by Ossie Davis, this social document pulls from texts written in the key of Black life and liberation.

A Bayou Legend (1981) dir. John Thomson

William Grant Still, the legendary Black composer of over 200 works, set a Bayou Legend opera around Brazille, a wandering man who falls for a spirit Aurore as he is relentlessly pursued by the deeply-jealous Clothide. The Mississippi-centered televised film of the composition is one of the earliest all-Black opera works on TV.

Lost in the Stars (1974) dir. Daniel Mann

Brock Peters, Melba Moore, Clifton Davis, and Raymond St. Jacques star in this South-African set musical at the dawn of Apartheid. The musical interpretation of the 1948 novel Cry the Beloved Country, has minister Stephen Kumalo (Peters) searching for his son (Davis) and soul’s purpose throughout Johannesburg.

Now is the Time (1967) dir. Jim Crum

“Now is the Time” is a mosaic of marches, Black spiritual, emotional, and inner life set to the readings of Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Mari Evans, and countless others. The documentary is guided by in-studio readings from Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.

The Black and the Green (1983) dir. St. Clair Bourne

How do we build solidarity across regions? This St. Clair Bourne directed documentary explores the influence of Black American Civil Rights Movement on Ireland as a group of Black activists seek to understand the plight of Ireland’s fight for Catholic independence struggle beyond sanitized headlines. PBS, the broadcaster of the film, originally deemed the 1983 work objectionable and delayed its initial premiere.

From these Roots (1974) dir. William Greaves

With William Greaves’ tender, encompassing gaze, he examines the root of a Black renaissance– The Harlem Renaissance. Directed, written, and produced by Greaves, “From These Roots” is a vivid exploration of the artistic and cultural buds planted in the Harlem Renaissance from an insider’s view. This is a thesis Greaves later revisits with “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance. 3

Adwa (1999) dir. Haile Gerima

It is often said ‘history is told by the victors,’ Gerima uses his 1999 work to tell the story of Ethiopia’s Tigray region 1896 battle of defeating the Italian military’s colonial efforts. Gerima’s “Adwa” explores how winning this battle was foundational to Ethiopia’s spirit as he travels to the streets to hear from those who experienced a dimension of the battle for themselves. Reminding us that ultimately, history belongs to us all.

By Right of Birth (1921) dir. Harry A. Gant

In the only surviving fragments of this film produced by the Black-owned studio Lincoln Motion Picture Company, we understand Black cinema’s earliest ambition: Black-cast films of emotional substance. The fragments feature early Black film star Noble Johnson, Clarence Brooks, and Booker T. Washington

Panther (1995) dir. Mario Van Peebles

This semi-historical dramatization of the Black Panthers’ origin story is a furious film whose desire is to engross a new generation with the history–neighborhood protection to public enemy number one– that shapes theirs. Written by Melvin Van Peebles and directed by the younger Van Peebles, this collaboration of senses, history, and generations stars Kadeem Hardison, Jenifer Lewis, Courtney B. Vance, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Bookem Woodbine.

These Hands (1993) Dir. Flora M’mbugu-Schelling

A mesmerizing, heartbreaking portrait of the back-breaking labor of Mozambican women refugees who work as stone crushers in a quarry. A document of the ways capitalism’s hold takes bondage as the women tend to children, each other, and the greater community.

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The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973) dir. Ivan Dixon

In Dixon’s work of fiery rage, CIA’s first Black agent returns home to use the man’s tools of colonization against them as they plot for a Black power-led revolution. Based on the novel of the same name by co-writer Sam Greenlee, the film was pulled from distribution with Grenlee contending the underseen film was shelved by the FBI. Shot guerrilla-style in secrecy by Dixon, most of the funding for the underground classic came from Black Americans desiring to see a film like this.

Mass of Images (1978) dir. Ulysses Jenkins

Engaging in a myriad of racial stereotypes of Black Americans in media, experimental artist Jenkins declares in a major voice, “You’re just a mass of images you’ve gotten to know, from years and years of TV shows.” The short considers the weight of racial stereotyping in visual media and how the psychological loop we are crushed under.

Ambushed (1998) dir. Ernest Dickerson

Black cop (Courtney B. Vance) is left to tend to a violently racist kid after his KKK father is shot dead and the kid serves as the only witness. When Jerry Robinson’s (Vance) patrol crew is ambushed and killed, Robinson must prove his innocence in this pursuit thriller. Dickerson’s genre style is on full display with a stacked cast.

Jack Johnson (1970) dir. Jim Jacobs

This archive-rich documentary animates the life of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion. Chronicling Johnson’s journey from turn-of-the century Black fighter to international icon, an original score by Miles Davis punctuates his extraordinary life.

Killer of Sheep (1978) dir. Charles Burnett

Burnett’s neorealist masterwork lays bare an extraordinary display of the poetic tenderness, temptation, and terror daily life brings Stan, a slaughterhouse worker in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Stony Island (1978) dir. Andrew Davis

The independently-made, underseen feature centers a ragtag group of musicians forming an R&B band in the South side of Chicago. At the center of the film, real-life saxophonist Gene Barge plays Percy Price, the elder statesman and spiritual guide of the under-resourced yet resilient group of musicians trying to make it despite the odds.

I & I: An African Allegory (1979) dir. Ben Caldwell

Directed, written, and produced by Ben Caldwell, key L.A. Rebellion figure, ‘African Allegory’ is an experimental reflection on the ties that bind us together. The ‘i and i’ links us as one when otherness attempts to divide.

In the Best Interests of the Children (1977) dirs. Elizabeth Stevens, Cathy Zheutlin, and Frances Reid

Centering the plight of lesbian mothers and their children, “In the Best Interests of Children” examines the then-groundbreaking truth that children thrive in queer households. Chronicling the experiences of families mostly in the Bay Area, the short documentary works through the legal pitfalls and social biases that tear families apart. Interviews animate the tenderness at the heart of the fight in this award-winning short.

Mississippi Triangle (1983) dirs. Christine Choy, Worth Long, and Allen Siegel

In the Mississippi Delta region, the racial triangulation of Black and Chinese communities are framed alongside the unique class, race, and power structures that force people to divide, conquer, and coexist. With an incredible focus on the labor conditions that reinforce circumstances, this powerful documentary is an essential primer to what “Sinners” (2025) framed. Associated produced by legendary Black cinema chronicler Pearl Bowser.

Word, Sound and Power (1980) dir. Jerry Stein

Named after the group of the same name, the documentary is a look into the Soul Syndicate–a session band fundamental to reggae’s global sound.

Three Pick-Up Men for Herrick (1957) dir. Melvin Van Peebles

Melvin Van Peebles’ sophomore short is a look at Black day laborers as they compete for a chance to work. With striking harmonica and scenes of 1950s San Francisco, here we see an artist bursting at their seams as they firmly mold their talent.

Cultural Nationalism (1968) dir. Skip Norman

Skip Norman is an artist painting a scene of a Black child in the snow accentuated by the sounds of Black Panther Party’s Bobby Seale. Seale illustrates the ways Cultural Nationalism robs the style of Blackness from Black people without care of Black lives.

Josépha (1975) dir. Joesph Akouissone

Originally presented as a television series on the conditions of women in Europe, Josépha trails the Black beautician talk– beauty, racism, aesthetic sensibility, and daily pains– that animates the lives of Black women across the globe.

The Devil Queen (1974) dir. Antonio Carlos da Fontoura

A hypnotic, daring wonder centering a trans queenpin (Milton Gonçalves) with a fondness for violence ruling the underworld of Brazil.

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You can find the full list on Black Film Archive here and log the films on Letterboxd here.

2025, like many years before it, has been a year of monumental loss. From genocides continuing to envelope every fraction of life; to mass layoffs and consolidation across industries; to the pioneering artists leaving us far too soon; this will be a year remembered for the ways the artistic roots have been disrupted from the soil that nourishes artistic spirit across generations. As the buds that remain, we must tend to the roots and plant new seeds with the stems blowing in the wind.

Through reflection of the pioneering Black media artists we’ve lost this year we also have a path to see the journey ahead. Below, I take a moment to memorialize pioneering Black artists seen throughout Black Film Archive and linking to their works in the Archive. As the year sails towards a new shore, I hope you’ll take a moment to reflect on the ways life’s natural changes, like death, become a constant teacher… living alongside us helping us arrive to where we’ve always belonged.

S. Pearl Sharp (Saundra Sharp) — Poet, Artist, Friend

S. Pearl Sharp1 was a poet, actor, pioneering Black woman filmmaker who died on October 11, 2025. As a filmmaker she is best known for her experimental short “Back Inside Herself” starring Barbara O; as an actor she is best known co-starring in the 1970s TV show “Wonder Woman.” She was a poet in verse, style, and form. She was the glue of her community—filmmaking, L.A. poetry, and otherwise. She maintained her signature grace, curiosity, and rhythm throughout her 82 years of life.

S. Pearl Sharp was born Saundra Pearl Sharp on December 21, 1942 in Cleveland, Ohio to Clarence and Faythe Sharp. Her parents divorced when she was young but the family unit of mother and daughter were active, engaged members of their local NAACP chapter and church community; advocacy was a pillar that stayed foundational for S. Pearl’s artistry and career. Upon graduating from Cleveland’s John Adams High School in 1960, S. Pearl attended Bowling Green State University where she studied music education alongside Radio and Television for a year but New York City —and putting what she was studying into practice— called to her. Upon arriving in New York, she landed a role as a copywriter for TV Guide while honing in her acting craft under the tutelage of Al Fann2 and Minnie Gentry.3 S. Pearl, while studying under Al Fann, helped develop his formalized Theatrical ensemble. Her earliest acting work was on the stage, with early major credits including originating the role of Netta in J.E. Franklin’s stage play “Black Girl,” (1971)4 and as a chorus member in “Hello Dolly” alongside Pearl Bailey from 1967-1968. She left the all-Black production of “Hello Dolly” to make her motion picture film debut in Gordon Parks’s “The Learning Tree” (1969).

In 1967, she testified about the state of Black actors for the Kerner Commission5, government hearings into the institutionalized discrimination against Black people across industries, having already starred in the first commercial featuring all Black performers in 1966. As an artistic butterfly taking flight during the Black Arts Movement, her work took a new path after taking a workshop from noted Black Arts Movement poet John Oliver Killens. During this transformative time for the blooming artist and Black artistry as a whole, S. Pearl founded Togetherness Productions. Togetherness’s aim was to give greater opportunities to Black talent. With S. Pearl saying:

“I think the word is already out that I’m a trouble-maker… But you know who your allies are in this business and you rely on them for support. I would like to see blacks doing roles that don’t always show their oppression and fear. I would like to see films about our black heroes on the screen- films written and directed by us.”

Togetherness Productions spawned the Black performance group Poets & Performers in 1969.6 The literary performance quartet comprised of musicians, poets, and stage actors whose aim was to amplify their individual gifts to create a new sound. They held a Countee Cullen Poetry Festival and toured across the country with original poetry and prose. As a member of Poets and Performers, she fully cultivated her childhood gift of writing poetry that would remain the most important gift in her life.

Throughout the 1970s and early 80s, acting picked up for S. Pearl Sharp. She had starring roles in the television movies like The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened (1977) co-starring Jimmie Walker and Debbie Allen and Hollow Image (1980), co-starring Robert Hooks and Dick Anthony Williams. The dynamic actor also made a number of recurring roles on television series, including Eve on “Wonder Woman” alongside Lynda Carter; Cathy in the pioneering PBS Black soap opera “Our Story;”7 “St. Elsewhere” (1984-1987); and “Knots Landing” (1985). She also had a number of guest starring roles on the original Charlie’s Angels television show, “Benson,” “Diff’erent Strokes,” “Lou Grant” and countless others.

S. Pearl was also a leading commercial spokeswoman— representing nationwide brands such as Avon— and by the mid-70s, her work took her to Los Angeles which remained her home for the rest of her life. In Los Angeles, she continued to feed her poetic soul as the director of Lorraine Hansberry Playwrights Workshop and as co-founder of of the Black Anti-Defamation Coalition8 which monitored the image of Black Americans in media.

Performance was not the only place S. Pearl blazed a trail. She was also an essential figure in chronicling the history of Black artists. Navigating the inconstancies of a full-time acting career, S. Pearl worked as an editor for numerous independent Black presses, bookseller at Aquarian9 in Los Angeles—working as the head of the children’s department of what was then the longest continually Black-owned bookstore in the country, and writer. She’s edited essential works on Black film and video artists, written volumes of poetry, and wrote an acclaimed two-act play musical play SISTUHS, which toured the country. Her published work includes “Soft Song,” a work of poetry; “Dearly Beloved,” a one act play; “Black Women for Beginners,” an illustrated, witty history of Black women; among others.

By the 1980s, S. Pearl turned her focus to working behind the camera. As a director, she combined her lifetime of craft-making to merge the wonders of poetry, art, and history across her filmography. Her debut short is the poem-narrative hybrid wonder “Back Inside Herself,” (1984), remains a touchstone of Black women’s filmmaking. She followed up her debut with the animated short film “Picking Tribes” that was broadcast on PBS. The award-winning filmmaker also had a gift for documentary storytelling with her “Life is a Saxophone,” which chronicles the life of poet Kamau Daaood. The pioneering filmmaker also created numerous documentaries— including “The Healing Passage: Voices from the Water,” following the residue of slavery that follows Black life and considering the ways art can heal us— for public television with her signature prose and heart.

She was loved fiercely by a tribe of those who knew the true nature of her heart. Watch her works on Black Film Archive here.

On a personal note, I have had the pleasure of knowing S. Pearl Sharp since 2023. To know me is to know I have a cadre of Black art elders I keep close, I was honored to have S. Pearl in that number. She excelled in many ways, not least of them by being a kind-hearted friend. I will leave you with the last words she spoke to me: “We must carry on with our purpose and let it guide us.” I hope to continue to live in that vision.

Jimmy Cliff — Singer and Actor

“Have you heard the news?” begins Jimmy Cliff’s hit song “The News.” The news has reached far and wide that the legendary singer and actor passed on November 24, 2025 at 81. Cliff was a spirited performer who used music and the stage to chronicle Jamaica’s cultural and political revolution, and in doing so, brought reggae to the world. As the centerpiece of the legendary film, “The Harder They Come” Cliff plays Ivanhoe “Ivan” Martin, a man who turns to petty crime when his music career comes to a standstill. The precision of elements coming together—central of which Cliff’s magnetism as performer— invents new rules for how film can be understood as a cultural magnet. Watch “The Harder They Come” here.

Souleymane Cissé - Legendary Director

The harmonic and beloved cinematic oeuvre of Souleymane Cissé sing songs that resist characterization but are tune to the spirt of African life. The legendary director was born and raised in in Bamako and used his cinematic eye to give shape to the full scope of West African beauty and plight. His artistic rise is in concert with the class of African filmmakers using the camera to capture liberation struggles on the continent. He is most recognized for Finye (1982) and 1987’s Yeelen, the winner of the Jury Prize in Cannes. Yeleen catapulted him to an international cinematic stage, often being dubbed the ‘greatest living African director’ and ‘the Father of African cinema.’

With a life dedicated to artistry, revelatory director Souleymane Cissé departure from this earthly plane is a monumental loss. The Malian director died on February 19, 2025 at 84.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner - Actor and Poet

The face that launched 1,000 crushes. Charismatic and beloved screen actor and poet Malcolm Jamal Warner departed too soon on July 20, 2025 at the age of 54. Rising to household name status as Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” his untimely death remains a shock to the millions who adored his antics on the screen. The actor who found success on shows like “Malcolm and Eddie,” co-starring Eddie Griffith and Dr. Alex Reed in “Reed Between the Lines,” co-starring Tracee Ellis Ross. The charmer consistently worked the fullness of his gifts throughout his noted filmography.

He can be seen in the Father Clements Story (1987).

Barry Michael Cooper - Screenwriter and director

There are pioneers who you may not know by name but their work is instantly recognizable. Barry Michael Cooper, the writer and producer who co-wote the 90s certified classic “New Jack City” (1991) passed in January 2025 at 66.

Cooper’s public writing career began as a critic for the famed Village Voice where he is credited with naming ‘New Jack Swing’ in an article surveying the burgeoning music and cultural movement. With his finger on the pulse, Quincy Jones came calling with an offer to fix up a script. That script, “New Jack City,” set Cooper on the Tinseltown path as the film helmed by Mario Van Peebles became cultural revolution of its own and set a tone for the Black cinema boom in the 1990s.

Lynn Hamilton - Actor

Lynn Hamilton was a beacon on the stage and screen. Her roots were planted in her hometown of Chicago’s The Goodman Theatre before spreading her wings to New York where she starred in Broadway and off-Broadway. Fate came calling to the tune of “Sanford and Son” where she played Fred Sanford’s up and down girlfriend in her best known role. As a silver screen actress she has held her own among the best of them with roles in 1972’s “Lady Sings the Blues” alongside Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams; 1972’s “Buck and the Preacher” alongside Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, and Harry Belafonte; and 1959’s “Shadows.”

James McEachin - Character Actor

James McEachin will be remembered for his measured presence on screen, often cast as the voice of sensibility. Passing on January 11, 2025, McEachin had roles in 1968’s “Uptight," “Buck and the Preacher,” and countless other credits.

Sly Stone - Cultural Icon

As the front man of Sly and the Family Stone, Sylvester Stewart transformed the course of cultural history. His musical lineage builds upon all that comes before it—the blues, gospel, and soul. Born in Texas and raised in Northern California, his church-trianed voice has reached every corner of cultural imagination. With endearing hits like “Everyday People,” “Family Affair,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” among endless others, his work continues to be the sound to cultural revolutions and cinematic language. His work has been the sonic soundscape for countless cinematic moments. As a cultural mainstay, he has been subject of specials like “Sly & The Family Stone: Swing in ‘70”.

Roberta Flack - Songtress of the Soul

To know love is to have reached the music of Roberta Flack. The songstress’s repertoire touches the heart, it gives animation to the indescribable depths of our souls. She is immortalized by the original act of putting language to the indescribable and lives again each time her music is played. As an artist of the heart, her work is the soundtrack to countless films; she also composed the music for 1981’s “Bustin’ Loose” starring Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson.

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6

Poets and Performance’s original members were poet Donald Green, pioneering poet and actor Norman Matlock (August 8, 1925 — September 30, 2015), Saundra Sharp, and master bassist Reggie Workman. The quartet was organized by Donald Green and S. Pearl in 1969 and toured the country.

Every August I look at the calendar and wonder how another anniversary for Black Film Archive has passed. Four years of shifting the conversation around Black cinema and digital preservation of that heritage. This moment would not be possible without you all. I remain so, so, so, so, so grateful.

What does it mean to make Black film history accessible? Four years ago today, I launched BlackFilmArchive.com after spending significant time pondering this question. In the years that have passed, I have spoken with artists–Black film and video makers, audiences, producers, distributors, directors, craftspeople, and the infinite others that make the Black film ecosystem possible–refining my answer to that question. Since Black Film Archive’s launch, I’ve been asked many variations of three essential root questions. I try my best to answer these root questions in their fullness below… but you can feel free to ask me anything in the comments. Thank you all.

There have been a slew of modern Black box office failures. Who (or what) will solve Black cinema’s (marketing) crisis?

When Black Film Archive originally launched in August 2021, it stopped in 1979 in concert with the fact that 1978’s The Wiz, the most expensive musical up until that point, was a commercial and critical failure. We arrive to this moment with two particular trends in Hollywood happening. Black-produced Blaxploitations, cheaply made but high grossing flicks, upend Hollywood’s expectations of what box office success looks like and Hollywood searches for a way to reproduce that success. The film that leads that charge, Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), becomes a hit after Melvin Van Peebles leads his own cinema-shifting marketing campaign–stating that the film was ‘rated X by an all white jury’ and independently marketing directly to Black neighborhoods. His instincts are mirrored by what cinema’s early Black pioneers, like Oscar Micheaux, did for their films– taking the film cans from city to city, marketing their films outside of expectations for what their films can be. But as The Wiz shows, Hollywood will take some lessons from what underground movements are doing to distribute films but not all. After they admit defeat with releasing The Wiz and Blaxploitations saved Hollywood from a certain demise, Tinsel Town decided they had enough financial backing to move on. But their divestment from Black cinema birthed the 80s and 90s wave of independent Black cinema that came after it.. That once again, shook the foundation of Hollywood’s core.

Often the Hollywood dream factory will take the reward for showcasing a moment, but not the work to deliver it fully. There will be ponderances like we release all of our other films like this… why do Black films need special work? With this context noted, my answer is simple: The ‘savior’ Black cinema is searching for is its own, Black media makers have always known how to release their films for the audience they’ve created them for; Hollywood–and its calculations of success outside of Black sensibilities– often takes the power from Black artists to do so. Spike– who carried the torch Melvin Van Peebles created, with his own one-man marketing machine that –got his start in cinema after “The Wiz” prevented investment in Black works. He made a way out of no way to help usher in a new path for Black video makers… history tells us that another independent film reckoning is on the horizon. The solution we are seeking is in our past.

Black audiences have always treated box office participation in Black media like a civic duty. A savvy distributor or studio would know that it's essential to tap into that impulse to make a film’s release successful by all measures…

And finally, the consolidation of release mediums means that returning to nontraditional models of financing and production are essential to the future of the field. Simply, the solution is preserving Black artist’s creative freedom by any means possible, to each person’s ability.

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What is up with all the trauma in Black film/media?

When I am asked this question on a panel, as I often am, I point to Frankie Beverly and Maze’s “Joy and Pain,” which states that joy and pain must co-exist to feel the other. Trauma, as it is often cornered into the catch all that has been applied to many facets of the Black experience, is psychological pain, works discussing slavery, or those who are down on their luck, et al.

Trauma in Black cinema–as has been widely discussed– often points to three works:

“Roots” –the widely beloved 1978 mini series that is the foundation of the mini-series as we know it today; the series was broken up into parts as a way to be buried after ABC did not believe in how the narrative was depicted; over 80% of the American public with a TV set in their home viewed the series live.

“12 Years a Slave” –-the 2013 film by Steve McQueen about Solomon Northorp’s odyssey as a free Black man who is sold into slavery and tries to reclaim his freedom. This work is often discussed with films released around the time like “Fruitivale Station.”

“The Color Purple” (1989) – an epic of Black women’s survival based on the book of the same name by Alice Walker. This film re-entered the conversation when the 2023 musical based on the same material was released.

When this chatter begins online it often is to the tune of how can I watch something beyond these types of films. Responding to this curiosity is what promoted Black Film Archive’s creation.1 But truthfully, depictions of ‘trauma’, as it rings in the minds of people, exist in Black life. Thinking about the three examples these conversations are tethered to: All three works brought new enlightenment to facets of Blackness: “Roots” ignited a generation’s passion for genealogy and understanding history; “The Color Purple” sparked cultural debate by the underdocumented history of Black women’s struggles and the need for visibility of our language and way; “12 Years A Slave” captured a moment in time to remind us that no avenue of Black life should be off limits (very few films focusing on slavery have ever been made contrary to popular belief.)

This conversation reminds me of Saidiya Hartman’s curiosities in “Scenes of Subjection:”2

“Are we witnesses who confirm the truth of what happened in the face of the world-destroying capacities of pain, the distortions of torture, the sheer unrepresentability of terror, and the repression of the dominant accounts? Or are we voyeurs fascinated with and repelled by exhibitions of terror and sufferance?”

Witnessing the truth and its Hollywood grandeur reminds us that freedom in film is framed through the eyes of those who have to work towards it, not in the master’s recounting of it. What is lost when we reduce the existence of pain as the totality of a cinematic experience? What happens when we are incurious about something that is deemed a negative expression? The terrors and the joys are interlinked. The presence of ‘trauma’ should not prevent us from engaging with art.

However, I find that often what people hope to say during this conversation is something to the tune of ‘How do we protect intracommunity knowledge and lived experiences in a world where white eyes are the decision-makers and gatekeepers?’ There is a consequential relationship between popularized images of Blackness and those who control its output; who is able to tell the story and what their intentionality is with the framing of images.

Aesthetic control of our image has been a foundational block of Black artistic creation since its genesis. An artistic curiosity that has sprung across time in response to the denial of Black humanity by white stereotypical mythmaking– the coon and its cousin myths– embedded into white cultural production at every level.By taking our image into our hands, Black artists suggest that controlling Black imagery is legacy work to render Black humanities and futures possible.

So, ultimately, I think the issue is not in and of itself trauma and negative images, I think it is commercial exploitation of white myths about Black life.

Why do we need sex on screen?

In 1955, Tan Magazine– a Johnson publication– asked “Will Hollywood Let Negroes Make Love?” in response to the Hollywood spectacle “Carmen Jones” (1954) that splashed across its cover.

James Baldwin, writes in his review of the film3, “Carmen Jones is one of the first and most explicit—and far and away the most self-conscious—weddings of sex and color which Hollywood has yet turned out.”

These two dynamics of conversation—explicit and implicit images of cinematic sex—continue to dominate our consciousness.

Sex is an expression of life. How it is displayed on screen shows you something about the character, setting, or circumstance. How people relate to each other in the height of passion—or lack there of— tells you as much as decoding the intricacies of setting and script. Passion is the point of life, sex is a display of that passion. Both implicit and explicit images of that belong on screen. After all, ‘Will Hollywood Let Negroes Make Love?’ The jury is still out.

Again, thank you all. And, please, ask me anything below (or in reply to this email.) Cheers!

I, like many native New Orleanians1, bifurcate our lives pre and post Hurricane Katrina. The ‘once-in-a lifetime’ storm that ruptured New Orleans – put into worldwide focus its one-of-a-kind history as the site of political reckoning, cultural rendering, and unique racial hierarchical framework– and transformed the city into otherness overnight twenty years ago this month.

In the aftermath of the storm, my community was censured as an enemy of America’s promise– in the days’ after the August 28, 20052 storm, New Orleans was called America’s ‘Baghdad,’ and other deeply racialized epitaphs– as our very humanity was called into question, and the nation’s feigning responsibility for its hurt, poor, and disadvantaged was permanently abandoned.

Questions like ‘How could they not know to evacuate? Who would leave their children on the roofs of homes? Why are people stealing from businesses?’ littered news and public opinion. Many of the post-Katrina community assassinations waged against New Orleans’s poor and Black assume the government—local and national— was designed to provide and fully protect them… it assumes that disaster will heal and harmonize America’s racial and social inequities… it assumes that America’s ‘heart’ and other magical thinking can save us from climate rapture and man-made engulfings.

I have been reflecting on Hurricane Katrina my entire life. Memory is imperfect, we are constantly calculating who, how, and what we are… measuring it against stories we’ve told, truths we’ve abandoned, or fantasies we’ve conjured. I am of this storm, it has shaped me–my optimism, willingness to believe in people-powered change, and imagination of the future.

I have attempted to distill my thoughts on the past, present, and future of the storm we waged and the storms to come into film curation. For New York’s Museum of Modern Art, I have co-curated a series on Hurricane Katrina, “When the World Broke Open: Katrina and Its Afterlives,” premiering August 26 - September 21. The series focuses on Hollywood’s narratives of New Orleans pre and post storm, documentarian’s vision of the city’s richness and lost, and the ways this storm has become a measure of who is protected in the face of natural disaster.

When the World Broke Open: Katrina and Its Afterlives
Curated by Maya S. Cade and K. Austin Collins
Museum of Modern Art, August 26 - September 21. 

Series highlights:

Les Blank's "Always for Pleasure" (1978) - August 27

Spike Lee's Katrina Docs -- "When the Levees Broke" and "If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise" Playing in Full (!) Twice. (!) 

Treme (TV PILOT) - Following a conversation with star Wendell Pierce, creator David Simon, and me - September 6 

J.D.'s Revenge (1976) - A New Orleans-set Blaxploitation -- Sep. 6 & Sep. 13

Language fails to convey the feelings... Feeling without sustained action fails the people. If the people are failed, a community is, too.

Twenty years later, Katrina does not miraculously stand alone. From numerous storms engulfing the Carolinas, fires in California, flooding in New York City, and every natural and man made disaster fro and till, I am reminded that the rebuilding of New Orleans was only possible because of the people. As we reflect on 20 years post Katrina, here are some films3 on Black Film Archive to remember the New Orleans–and greater Gulf Coast– we lost:

Hurry Sundown (1967) dir. Otto Preminger

The Louisiana-shot melodrama is boiling over with racial tension as land—the selling and caring of it— comes to change the previously drawn color lines against a common class enemy. Starring Diahann Carroll, Robert Hooks, and Beah Richards, the overstuffed epic is Hollywood’s attempt to answer the ‘race problem’ that is boiling over outside of the dream factory.

Cane River (1982) dir. Horace Jenkins

“Cane River” is a charming love story set in the heart of Louisiana. Drawing on how colorism and class tensions shift the way of living for Black Southerners, Horace B. Jenkins’s only film is a socially penetrating film that will sweep you up into its loving gaze of Louisiana and romance’s promise.

Cajun Country (1991) dir. Alan Lomax

“Cajun Country” is an investigation into New Orleans’s unique racial— migration, colonization, cultural, and segregation— dynamics that created the cajun culture of Louisiana. With acuity, Lomax listens to the tune of the Native and Black music-makers that comprise the Cajun tune.

Home Movies: New Orleans

A panoramic view of 1950s New Orleans. Breaking through color lines, the camera is a visual guide of New Orleans as Black and white New Orleanians tend to their day’s doldrums, dreams, and visions across the great city.

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May you all keep your heart about you. Do you have a Hurricane Katrina memory? I would love to hear them in the comments. If you’re in New York during the MoMA series I curated, I hope you’ll join me.

When I first learned I was going to become the president/owner of Milestone Films, it was during the summer 2024 premiere run of “Naked Acts.” As the story goes— I had brought “Naked Acts”1 to Milestone Films and worked on every aspect of its release from press, design, and distribution strategy. Across the year of “Naked Acts,” the question from audiences across the world simply was: What are you following this up with? That eagerness for something with their name on it… wasn’t to rush me but to suggest that this work had filled a void and there was more work to be done. I would always respond with, ‘what would you like to see?’ Taking notes from the audience directly.

Fast forward to: A few weeks ago, a major milestone on my journey of becoming the president occurred: I acquired my first film.2 Milestone Films, focusing on repertory titles3 (and will continue to during my reign), means this acquisition is an older film that hasn’t received nationwide distribution before. The details of the film— directed by a Black director, with a Black writing team— won’t be the focus here. I will allow the film to have its own moment but my thinking, as promised in my announcement of becoming a film distributor, will be.

Acquisition of any art work is a delicate dance of trust. Countless hours and people make the magic of movies happen, with varying degrees of pay or public understanding. There is a long history of filmworkers of color being burned by film distribution. When we consider that often these films are made outside of Hollywood’s expectations, financing, and public relations machine, they also aren’t a one sized fits all mold for distribution or exhibition.4 In the modern era, by the time distributors are aware of a repertory title for release, academics or public demand make it so distribution feels like a natural course of action.

Here are three essential things I’m asking myself as I forge ahead on this distribution path:

1. How do I honor the full legacy of film history? With the releases I am working on for my first year as President, there are varying degrees of public knowledge of them; with some having no public awareness at all. Distribution—and the acquisition of new films— often relies on other historical tools— positive New York Times reviews, big festival splashes, et al— to make the contextual shorthand easier for audiences to grasp onto. Honoring the legacy of films that have never received any historical recognition is harder work... Audiences have become accustomed to repertory films having a certain kind of anticipation but if I follow the path of exporting my curatorial taste to other institutions’s validation, only a certain type of film could be acquired. Honoring the legacy of the films I hope to release means breaking this chain of logic.

2. How do I allow a film to reach its intended audience? Like common convention for acquisition, there is common convention for how a repertory film should be released. Honoring the full legacy of films mean that I must believe there are more than one path for films to find their way. I am doing deep readings of the past to find new ways to exhibit films in the future.

3. How do I honor myself by understanding things take time? The “glamour” of this work— grand stories of rediscovery and new restorations— take time. Acquiring films is the first step among several before a movie, hopefully, reaches cinemas. The dance of trust and patience that filmworkers employ for cinema’s creation must also be applied to distribution. By honoring that things take time, we can also create individual strategies for each film that allows it to reach those who are anticipating the work even if they do not yet know it.

If you’ve followed my writing for any length of time, you’ll know that I am an optimist. As headlines roll on about the death of cinemas, I see unshakeable opportunities to engage audiences with film. The labor and birth of Black Film Archive has taught me, time and time again, that there will always be a way for audiences to cherish and engage meaningfully with art. Let us follow that path to new dimensions while honoring the paths that brought us here.

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As I wrote in my announcement of the distribution diary, the focus of this newsletter will remain on Black Film Archive beyond a missive here or there on distribution. Also, I want to re-elevate something I wrote a year ago that has been on my mind to reshare:

“It came to me that this condition, if it lasted, would mean that I had lost the point: not to resemble my enemies, not to dwarf my world, not to lose my willingness and ability to love.”

The Harlem Riots of 1964 began in response to the slaying of a 15-year-old Black boy, James Powell, at the hands of a NYPD officer. Powell’s offense? Gathering on a stoop after summer school classes. The murder of Powell sparked 6 days of protests across Harlem and Brooklyn. The demonstrations turned violent at the hands of the NYPD as they viscously beat countless residents who demanded justice. This is an inflection point we are all to familiar with as history mirrors our current moment.

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June Jordan continues to write in reflection of the riots, “I resolved not to run on hatred but, instead, to use what I loved, words, for the sake of the people I loved. However, beyond my people, I did not know the content of my love: what was I for?”

Each moment working towards a revolution, we are infinitely becoming… who or what are we for? Perhaps you’ve asked yourself the same question as you march in the streets, lend a hand to a neighbor, check in on your community, and demand the freedoms of those we know and don’t. Agony of the unknown cannot dwarf us into invisibility. We are here and to be here means to know what’s done is never final as long as we maintain our hearts.

Los Angeles: The first Black Film Archive event in L.A. is happening at 7 p.m. on Juneteenth (6/19) at Philosophical Research Society. Bridgett M. Davis and I will gather for an intimate conversation on writing as freedom and the ways Davis has used her craft to chronicle Black truth and the intricacies of our soul through her career as a memorist (The World According to Fannie Davis) and filmmaker (“Naked Acts,” 1996). This will be our first public conversation since its been announced I will soon be her film distributor. I’m giving away two tickets to the event. Entry information below.2

+On 6/20 at 7:30, we will screen “Naked Acts” at Vidiots followed by a conversation with us. Each ticket purchase comes with a DVD of “Naked Acts” courtesy of Milestone Films :-)

In moments of noted societal harm and during fascism’s reign, I am often challenged on how can film reflect the wholeness of Black lives; queer lives. I think of June Jordan, the bisexual poet who makes the future feel tangible, as she witnessed the riots and committed herself to art-making or those who committed themselves to marching in the past and present. Before there is a final solution, there is an offering. As Essex Hemphill, legendary Black queer poet, writes in his poem “When My Brother Fell:”

“When my brother fell I picked up his weapons. I didn't question whether I could aim or be as precise as he.”

Film can often be that offering to reflect and contemplate the wholeness of queer lives as Black queer filmic works transcend the rigidity of form. The selections below— with films ranging from comedy and animation— offer visual windows you may not have seen before. Watch them as you tend to the world and make our future feel possible. View all the films on Black Film Archive here.

Greta’s Girls (1978) dir. Greta Schiller

In this narrative short, one of the first narrative films to focus on lesbians, we see the lives of a tender couple and their dog as they make a home and way out of New York City.

The Mark of Lilith (1986) dirs. Bruna Fionda. Polly Gladwin, and Zach Mack-Nataf

When Lillia encounters Zena (Pamela Lofton), a Black lesbian vampire, who is studying goddess across time and the horror genre, Lilla, a white bisexual vampire, is awakened from the slumber of life’s doldrums.

Greetings from Africa (1994) dir. Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye, playing a comedic version of herself, rolls her camera on this diaristic short addressing the tensions and pleasures of lesbian dating in the 1990s.

Adam (1996) dir. Andrea Stoops

“Adam” is a joyful exploration of gender identity. A young girl relishes in being mistaken for a boy on the playground in this claymation short.

If She Grows Up Gay (1983) dir. Karen Sloe

Jan, the working class mother at the center of this intimate documentary, comes to terms with the weight of the world, her queer identity, and choosing a life with her woman partner, Renee, as she raises her daughter.

View all the films on Black Film Archive here.

I’m giving away two tickets for Black Film Archive’s Juneteenth Philosophical Research Society event with Bridgett M. Davis. To enter, reply to this email in your inbox or write(maya@blackfilmarchive.com) with the subject line “tickets.” I will pick two winners at random by Tuesday 6/17. Hope to see you there.

P.S. - Thank you all for your kind words on the announcement I will soon become the president / owner of Milestone Films. I am deeply appreciative.

Friends,

Hello– when I last wrote to you, I mentioned that some news would be coming that will change my relationship to film. (Eeeep!) The fact I will soon become the President/owner of Milestone Films

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For 35 years, Milestone Films– co-founded by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller –has been distributing films–theatrically and on home video– at the margins of film canonization. It is an honor to build on their storied and crucial legacy to transform Milestone Films into one of very few Black-owned and managed film distribution companies.

Milestone Films’s library, that I will soon be the caretaker of, has Black Film Archive favorites— like “Killer of Sheep” (1978) dir. Charles Burnett, “Alma’s Rainbow” (1994) dir. Ayoka Chenzira, “Bless Their Little Hearts” (1983) dir. Billy Woodberry, “Losing Ground” (1982) dir. Kathleen Collins— and discoveries from across the filmmaking spectrum of taste and sensibility that I look forward to caring for all the same.

This moment comes as much of my last two years were spent ushering in “Naked Acts” (1996), a very special film by Bridgett M. Davis distributed by Milestone, that I rediscovered and led the distribution efforts on. While we worked to release Bridgett’s never-distributed-before film– called a ‘rediscovery that expands cinema’ by Richard Brody in the New Yorker– it became clear that distribution work is something I could do more expansively and consistently. Since then, I have worked on Charles Burnett’s “Annihilation of Fish” and “Killer of Sheep” alongside Milestone’s co-founders.

My news feels like the culmination of a promise I made when launching Black Film Archive in August 2021 of widening knowledge of Black cinema’s abundance. To build awareness about the dynamic range of Black cinema was always the first step–and a step that will continue for years to come– but to bring equity to the distribution process remains crucial for Black repertory1 cinema’s survival. Through distribution —and proper marketing, release, relationship with cinemas and exhibition venues in community, and director/family participation— Black repertory cinema can continue to thrive. I am grateful for my peers who have been doing this work, whether its filmmakers who are taking it upon themselves to release their own works or other distributors who have recognized the call with care.

Black Film Archive –and my curation of it– will not change. My work began with community in mind and will continue with that, too. Through your support–yes, you, reading this– the possibility of what the future holds has been enhanced, sharpened, and wielded into reality. Community trust remains paramount and I will continue supporting Black filmmakers, moviegoers, community members and their agency to choose what speaks to them while working hard to ensure the films I unearth for distribution fits that distinction.

The pride I feel in this moment is credit to Jessie Maple (20West), Ava DuVernay (ARRAY), Haile Gerima and Shirikiana Aina (Mypheduh Films), Michelle Materre (KJM3 Entertainment Group, Inc.), Warrington Hudlin (Black Filmmakers Foundation), Oscar Micheaux (Lincoln Motion Picture Company) and the countless named and unnamed Black pioneers who have carved a path for me to follow in film distribution and beyond. Thank you simply does not feel like enough.

As I work to build upon the legacy of Milestone Films and transitioning it to Black ownership, I will be launching a Distribution Diary column—of which this serves as the first— via this Substack that gives me space to share lessons learned as the building of what’s to come continues. However, the focus here will remain a celebration of the Black cinema ecosystem beyond my own contributions to it. Thank you, all and thank you again. If you have any questions, concerns, or celebrations, please leave a comment below or send me a private note at maya@blackfilmarchive.com, I look forward to hearing from you.

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Burnett (b. April 13, 1944) was the first of the infamous L.A. Rebellion1 cohort to enter UCLA in 1967. Every poet finds their form and Burnett, who originally wanted to study within the rigidity of practicality, found filmmaking on a whim. “Killer of Sheep” is a lyrical sonnet of a Watts family’s life. Stan (the brilliant Henry G. Sanders) is a slaughterhouse worker who drags the stench of his life’s dissatisfaction home as the pressures and bitterness of masculinity pour out of him and onto his wife (the effective Kaycee Moore), children, and community. Men with gentle hands and hearts are given the burden of a unit’s survival and the distance the burdens offer in this tender outline of life’s cruelties and determination. “Killer of Sheep” gave sight and sound to our beings unlike many films before it and few after. So how does a film like this disappear?

NYC! L.A. Rebellion: Then and Now is playing at Film at Lincoln Center April 25 to May 4. The curated series is a buffet of popular (Burnett’s "To Sleep with Anger") and lesser-seen ("Passing Through" 1977) L.A. Rebellion jewels with recent essential Black works to showcase the intergenerational ties in Black filmmaking and our greater community. I’ve worked with Film at Lincoln Center to provide a discount code for Black Film Archive subscribers. Use promo code BURNETT for $5 off any film in the series.

Originally created as a student thesis and away from the concerns of marketability, Hollywood oversight, or copyright, “Killer of Sheep” found itself in the whims of copyright’s claim from a distinct soundtrack that pulsates from the dynamic range of Black sound and Burnett’s own sonic impulses. Pulling vinyls from his collection as he saw fit, Burnett used the soundtrack as a dialogue between what the screen can capture and what the soul can not say. As an essential element of the film, the soundtrack— with songs from Earth, Wind, & Fire, Paul Robeson, Dinah Washington, and countless others— and the film’s image could never be fully severed.

In 1990, the Library of Congress placed “Killer of Sheep” among the first 50 films in its newly formed National Film Registry for historically significant films. In the early 2000s, the National Society of Film Critics selected it as one of their most essential films of all time. The acclaim it garnered across time took the film from whisper network, unreleased sensation to cinephilic household name without proper release as the film elements began to show their age from wide use. In 2000, Ross Lipman, then the senior film preservationist at UCLA, began the work to restore the film and protect the film’s elements and made a 35mm print from the 16mm negative.2 But before a film can make it from archival holding to our hearts and homes with a commercial release, it must be cleared from copyright. Dennis Doros and Amy Heller, the co-founders of Milestone Films—a repertory3 distributor with a commitment to distribute a dynamic range of film—undertook the complicated and expensive task to secure the music rights and bring the film out theatrically and home video. With UCLA Film & TV Archive’s preservationists Ross Lipman and Jillian Borders leading the restoration, “Killer of Sheep” was commercially released for the first time in fall 2007. The type of music clearances offered at the time had an expiration date, which meant the film’s commercial life was relatively short and was out of print roughly a decade later.

Film Restoration is a frame by frame resurrection of sound, sight, and form. For a revolutionary film like “Killer of Sheep,” whose existence, despite the 2007 release, has remained the diametrically opposed both/and as a film at the margins and cult classic, is now back in the fold. The Criterion Collection, UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Milestone Films underwent an extensive frame-by-frame transformation of sound, image, and clearances to present “Killer of Sheep” as it was intended to be seen. The new 4K director approved restoration was overseen by Ross Lipman and Jillian Borders. I was also proud to serve as a consulting producer for this release and bear witness to the magic unfolding.

With modern film restoration tools, a director can pose new curiosities, edits, and modalities of thought. In the restoration room, Charles, the poet revisiting his earliest full-length prose, posed ideas to how scenes could be shortened, enhanced, and altered. We listened as he offered his considerations for what was, is, and could be. Ultimately, as we all saw the resurrection come back to life, we understood that the film was already made in a divine Black image and our task was to serve that image so it could change the world again and always again. It is often said that Black film has never reached the heights Black literature has; “Killer of Sheep” challenges that thought as Burnett’s tender work and heart provides an everlasting intimacy of our spirit that touches the soul and moves filmmaking forward.

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The 4K restoration of “Killer of Sheep” (1978) premieres at New York’s Film Forum tonight, April 18, at 7:50 pm ET with Charles Burnett in person. In Los Angeles, the Laemmle NoHo 7 will open the film on April 25, 2025 with a run. There are also showtimes across the country.

“Killer of Sheep” enters the Criterion Collection on May 27, 2025 in 4K / Blu-Ray.

You can watch many of Charles Burnett’s other films on Black Film Archive here.

I am often reflecting on Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem “For colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf.” In the first chapter of the infamous work she proclaims:

somebody/anybody

sing a black girl's song

bring her out

to know herself

to know you

but sing her rhythms

carin/struggle/hard times

sing her song of life

she's been dead so long

Cinema has a way to render Black womanhood invisible in its active suppression of our fullness– our rhythms, carin, struggle, hard times, songs of life— that animate all we touch, are, and can be. Black women filmmakers, with a deft hand, take the impetus of Shange’s choreopoem and bring “an oppositional gaze,”1 as bell hooks famously named. hooks reminds us that, at its essence, media is a “system of knowledge and power reproducing and maintaining white supremacy.” Within our gaze, film is given new modes of understanding and image construction.

Zeinabu irene Davis is one of cinema’s independent architects that mirror the fullness that Shange and hooks promise. Davis’s work is best expressed in her own words: “I am trying to create a visual language that is reflective of the African-American female experience. So I am very specifically trying to do projects which are based on the lives of women that I know. I am trying to not necessarily tell a story in strict narrative style, but trying to take some chances, take some risks in telling the story to get across the everyday experiences of Black women’s lives.”2

Zeinabu irene Davis began her career while studying pre-law at Brown University. While at Brown she was an intern at WSBE-TV, working on “Shades,” a Black-interest public affairs program hosted by Gini Booth. Her and film found each other as she was studying abroad in Kenya and began working with Ngugi wa Thiong’o3 in 1981 as a rear projectionist for a production of his play. Eventually they agreed to work on a film together. When government censorship shut the play down and Davis returned to America before formally working on the proposed film, the impulse to create and the Africana spirit remained with her. She received her M.A. in Africana Studies and M.F.A in Film / Television Production from UCLA. Zeinabu is a part of the “LA Rebellion” —a cohort of Black filmmakers at UCLA who’s commitment to Black image and craft-making pushes beyond the presumption of film’s white, hierarchal, and aesthetic framework4 with a focus on Black family, life, love, and liberation.

Davis’s “Wimmin with a Mission” productions banner encapsulates the spirit of her life’s creations, with a mission to present characters, themes, and scenarios far from Tinseltown’s definitions of inherent Black inferiority and form. The spirited director creates worlds of spiritual and emotional transformation, rending the world anew with her considered gaze.

In Davis’s 1991 short “A Powerful Thang”, a couple is anticipating their first sexual experience. As the day’s doldrums drag on, the anticipation becomes its own art form and explosion before the lovers —a single mother returning to dating and a jazz musician— find their own safe sex groove in the sacredness of Black love and intimacy.

With “Cycles" (1989) Davis tells the story of an anxious woman awaiting her overdue period. In this intimate short, the waiting woman cleans her house and body and performs purification rituals. The film combines music and dreams to tell a story uniquely for Black women.

Watching Zeinabu irene Davis’s considered and impassioned work at the end of this world5 reminds us that art can guide us to somewhere anew.

The legendary director joined me for a quick chat in celebration of the theatrical release of “Compensation.”6 The 1999 debut feature from Davis weaves together two sets of Chicago lovers—beautifully played by John Earl Jelks and Michelle A. Banks— featuring a deaf woman and hearing man, who face the edge of death from tuberculosis in the early 1900s and HIV/AIDS in the 1990s. Incorporating sign language, silent film techniques, and archival photography, “Compensation” is a student of the cyclical nature of love, life, and the abundance of Black archival possibility.

The innovative film, which played at Sundance in 2000, was relegated to the specialized screening market after a negative review prevented it from the full-bodied theatrical release it deserved. At the center of the film’s genius is Davis’s ability to not use lack—of funds and resources— as a detriment to her creative process but a spirit to carry on and sing a Black girl’s song.

In this new release of “Compensation,” as Davis explains in detail below, the film is not simply a restoration but uses technology’s advancement to highlight the form and techniques that were always at the heart of the film; but they are now rejuvenated. With considered intimacy of our history, love, cinematic language, and experimental form, “Compensation,” in its new form and in its past release, is genuinely one of the greatest films of all time.

Maya S. Cade: I want to begin our conversation with discussing how [the re-release of “Compensation”] happened. I know that Women Make Movies had the film circulating for many years. And then it kind of felt like the world cracked open for you in the last few years. So can you tell me a little bit about how that feels and how that happened?

Zeinabu irene Davis: Okay, well, it feels great. That's an easy answer right there. It happened primarily, I think, just the stars lined up. Ashley Clark programmed it as part of the Black 90s series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Richard Brody actually reviewed the film along with “Sankofa” and “Daughters of the Dust” and he just fell in love with the film and kind of kept writing about it. Ashley moved from Brooklyn Academy Music over to Criterion and so the ball got rolling… [Criterion] picked it up in 2020 right at the beginning of the pandemic. [The] restoration/rejuvenation started pretty much last year and we've been kind of going strong ever since then.

MC: Something I'm really curious about is [there is] a lot of discussion around, when these kind of restorations happen, what does it mean for the [Black] filmmaker? Is it a smooth process to unearth something?

ZiD: Yeah, I could only speak for myself. I mean I'm very happy that I'm in such good company with other particularly other Black women filmmakers like Bridget Davis who you helped bring Naked Acts.7 Thank you very much again for that wonderful film.

Ayo's8 film “Alma’s Rainbow” [and] well even Charlie9 with an “Annihilation of Fish” to some degree. I think part of it is that there is this deep satisfaction in knowing that your work is evergreen meaning that even though you made something that was in the 90s, it can still be appreciated by audiences, full stop period. So I think that's the gift of the restoration / rejuvenation for me is that what you did back then was worthwhile and it's still relevant or it can be appreciated by audiences today. [That] has gotten me through the hard work of doing the rejuvenation as I call it.

MC: Why do you call it a rejuvenation and what are the differences between the original release and this one?

ZiD: I say it's a rejuvenation because it's better than the original, different than the original. [The] main differences are three things. The obvious one, which is that the picture is so much better in 4K. I'm very glad we shot it in 16 mm film because that's a stable form for cinema and we know we can make copies of that negative. But now with 4K, the clarity in terms of the visual details is so much nicer.

A couple of things I can point out for people is that [both] of my actors are dark-skinned African-Americans and in some sections of the film, particularly in the “L” Train [citation] sequence, we did that gorilla style so we didn't have lighting in any of those scenes [but] now with the restoration you can really see the difference. And then with the archival photographs, you can actually see some more of the detail because with the rejuvenation, we were able to clean up those photographs. And in some cases we're able to zoom in just a tiny bit. …And then the sound. The clarity has renewed the picture. The sound was completed on a 16 mm optical track And I spent months working the night shift with a group in Chicago called MaestroMatic to do the sound design because that's my favorite part of the film making process.

We designed the soundtrack with deaf [and hard of hearing] people in mind so we did some experiments with sound so that we would push the sound to its loudest points because in some instances Michelle said that her experiences of sound seem to be heightened when she could put her hand close to a speaker so she could feel the vibration of the music. We have sections that are really loud with the train or really loud with the Chicago house music that's in the film. Those are deliberate choices and we were able to kind of bump that up to its full levels with the rejuvenation.

And then lastly, and most importantly, I think what we did with the captions is really very satisfying. I was able to work with another hearing filmmaker Allison O'Daniel who did the film “Tuba Thieves” and it was at Sundance 2023. Allison collaborated with me to do more immersive captions for the film. We were able to have the music mostly in the upper left-hand corner of the frame and then the sound effects are over on the right and the dialogue is in the in the in the center of the frame sometimes, but one of the things that Allison taught me was that it was more it would be better for deaf and hard-of-hearing office audiences if the captioning was closer to the speaker who was actually talking so that if it's multiple characters in the scene, then the deaf or hard of hearing audience member would know who was talking because the captions would be as close to their body as possible. So it wasn't just in the center of the screen, it moves to different parts of the screen. And so that I think made it more immersive and available to the audience.

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MC: Thinking about your filmography, you're such a visually innovative and transformative director. And I really want to know how do you maintain your creative spirit?

ZiD: Thank you. I think it's constantly being exposed to students because I have to keep up and that [informs] my practice. I'm teaching them, but they teach me also, and I've always been someone who wants to see new work. I [also] go to various film festivals just to see who the new makers are that are upcoming and watch their works to appreciate what they're doing. I think just constantly being exposed to as much film culture as you could get and and getting back into the practice of going to the movie theater and not just seeing it on my laptop; it's really important that we still have that movie going experience because there's just something magical about sitting in a dark room with a whole bunch of other people and experiencing what's on the screen in front of you… and Black folks we talk to the screen… I think that the magic of having somebody in the audience respond to something that you can identify really soothes my soul. It makes me feel good. In “Compensation” even though it's generally kind of a serious movie, there's moments of humor in there. Some of them are brought by my own biological brother, Kevin Davis who plays the Tyrone character in the contemporary section. So that it is basically a continuation of our practices as LA Rebellion filmmakers to use people from our community to make our films. So in my case, and in several LA Rebellion filmmakers…We use our family members in the films. So I think that it's kind of important that we involve our communities in the film making process in whatever way. We do it and I think that also keeps me going and reinvigorated.

On the “Compensation” rejuvenation, I have two daughters and my daughters helped [with the process.] They both sat down with me and watched the film painstakingly over a few weeks time and like we we worked on saying what the music was, what it could be and they did an amazing job. I could not have done it without them because they had the knowledge of music, but I had the knowledge of film so we could we could speak to each other across those lines and and come up with something that would let audiences know what the music is but not bludgeoning them with like saying, well, you need to feel this way.

MC: “Compensation” is such an act of love because, your creative partner and life partner as the writer, then involving your family in the rejuvenation. I mean just all of this is just so significant and it shows in the work.

ZiD: Yep, Mark Arthur Chéry, that's my screen writer. I still cry sometimes when I watch “Compensation” because of the beauty of the words that he wrote in the letter from Malika to Nico, when she lets him know what's going on with her and then also with that letter from Arthur to Melendi. I've seen the film thousands of times probably but it still makes me very excited and happy to see that as well. I'm so grateful really.

The rejuvenated “Compensation” is now playing in arthouse cinemas across the country with Janus Films. Find showtimes here. Watch “A Powerful Thang” and “Cycles” on Black Film Archive now.

Which is why I am writing to let you all know that tomorrow, March 6, 2025 at 8 p.m. PT / ET, I am proud to be co-hosting for the very first time, followed up with a continuation of the program next Thursday at 8 p.m. The primetime program, Black Women Independents, is a survey of Black women independent filmmakers. The program kicks off with the television debut of “Naked Acts” (1996), the first film I’ve worked on from discovery to restoration. From a childhood fascination with TCM to a dream come true, I owe a sincere thank you to everyone who has supported my work or championed me. The full schedule for viewing is below:1

Black Women Independents - co-hosted by Maya S. Cade on TCM

Thursday March 6
Naked Acts (1996)
8 p.m. (ET/PT)

Alma’s Rainbow (1994)
9:45 p.m. (ET/PT)

I Am Somebody (1970) + A Dream Is What You Wake Up From (1978)
11:30 p.m. (ET/PT)

Thursday March 13

A Powerful Thang (1991)
8 p.m. (ET/PT)

A Different Image (1982)
9:15 p.m. (ET/PT)

Losing Ground (1982)
10:15 p.m. (ET/PT)

As I’ve spent the last several months thinking of independent Black women filmmakers and in celebration of Women’s History Month, I wanted to present a companion program for you to view on Black Film Archive. The films below speak to the abundant nature of Black women’s contribution to the form. From Alice Coltrane’s musical vibrations to an experimental wonder that questions the American dream, the films here remind us that the truth, and cinema’s potential to display it, is a many-splendored thing. View all the films on Black Film Archive here.

Eternity’s Pillar (1985) dir. Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda

A constant thread in my life has been the sonic callings of Alice Coltrane’s musical vibrations. In Eternity’s Pillar, Coltrane’s late night show on Los Angeles’s KCRW, the harmonic giant expresses the full dynamic range of her offerings: The classically trained pianist meets the transcending recording artist meets the spiritual guide. In Eternity’s Pillar, Coltrane’s aim was to showcase the harmony of the many callings to God and the ways that calling connects us all.

I Like It Like That (1994) dir. Darnell Martin

Darnell Martin’s audacious feature debut, one of the first films by a Black woman director to be produced by a Hollywood studio, is a loud, colorful New York drama that asks ‘How can love survive despite it all?’ Can it survive the weight of family separation due to arrest? Infidelity? Financial burdens? With a lot of heart and humanity, Lisette’s (Luna Lauren Valez) journey reminds us that no matter how far you run, you cannot escape the weight of yourself or the people you love.

MOTV (My Own TV) (1993) dir. Ayoka Chenzira

The American dream is supposed to be simple, right? Two hearts meet, they fall in love, they have a family and the white picket fence. In Ayoka Chenzira’s “MOTV (My Own TV)” the dream is given complexity as the couple’s inability to have a child and move beyond their financial circumstances begins to make the dream feel like entrapment. With Ayoka Chenzira’s tenderhearted hands and experimentation with form, this intercultural vision of the American dream of loving moves from fantasy to reality.

Shipley Street (1981) dir. Jacqueline Fraizer

Educational attainment has always been used as a way to level up economically. In Jacqueline Fraizer’s “Shipley St.,” a Black school girl is sent to an all-white Catholic school with her family’s hope for more. When she arrives, Lana Wilson (Leslie Smith) is confronted with the present reality of being continuously punished with frozen looks from her classmates, harsh discipline from administrators, and the tolls of everyday racism. Fraizer’s film is a forceful display on the ways racism shapes white institutions and the troubles Black children of all ages must carry.

Call Waiting (1997) dir. Lorna Simpson

In a literal game of telephone, Lorna Simpson paints a picture of the complexities of human relation as lovers, friends, and acquaintances are misunderstood in various points of intimate connection.

View the full list on Black Film Archive here.

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My life’s mission became crystal clear when I met Bridgett M. Davis, writer and director extraordinaire, in the fall of 2022, a year after Black Film Archive’s launch. A few weeks before this fateful gathering, I had the pleasure of viewing her 1996 undistributed feature, “Naked Acts” in a screening room at Indiana University’s Black Film Center/Archive where I was a guest film programmer and lecturer. Upon viewing the first few scenes of Davis’s film, I wrote down in my research notebook ‘How do I get this film out in the world?’ It became clear in the whirlwind of those weeks of originally viewing the film and meeting Davis that the ‘power’ and trust I was amassing in the industry meant nothing if it could not tangibly support the filmmakers within the Archive and beyond. From a DM I sent to the director on Twitter simply asking if she would like me to advocate for the film’s distribution to the months of discussing what it means to bring this Black woman’s film back out into the world, we developed a kinship that changed the course of my life. 1

“Naked Acts” centers CeCe (the incredible Jake-Ann Jones), a third-generation Black woman actress who just landed her first big role after shedding pounds. The film within the film, directed by an old boyfriend (the great Ron Cephas Jones), requires CeCe to pose nude and confront the body image issues and emotional tolls that are not visible to the naked eye. “Naked Acts” also stars legendary photographer Renee Cox and Sandye Wilson as Winsome. With Bridgett Davis’s tender hand, the weighty issues of sexual abuse and body image issues receive a lightness that illuminate the full potential of the Archive’s possibility. This moment arrives, which we discuss at length in the Q&A below, after Davis’s feature debut was pushed to the margins when the industry couldn’t figure out how to support this film and filmmaker.

In the last year Bridgett and I have had the privilege of traveling the world with the film. From the best opening of a repertory film in the last five years2 at Brooklyn’s BAM cinema, a sold out night at New York’s Film Forum, and an international debut in Rotterdam… we spent much of the year with people asking "How have I never heard of this?” Richard Brody, writing a review in the New Yorker last summer, sums it up best: “The rediscovery of “Naked Acts” expands film history.” That expansion is an opening for us all to consider how we can support Black filmmakers known and unknown, here and yet to come.

The DVD/Blu-Ray of “Naked Acts” is available today and is jammed packed with archival footage, an exclusive interview with me and Bridgett, and more! Davis, who was pushed away from her first love of filmmaking, turned to book writing. You may have read her international bestseller, “The World According to Fannie Davis,” on her mother. On March 11, Davis will debut her new memoir on her sister, “Love, Rita,” a tender celebration of sisterhood and the grief that often tinges Black woman’s lives. I’m doing a special giveaway of “Naked Acts” and “Love, Rita” with the details below the Q&A. 3

Maya Cade: I really want to begin with grounding how we got to this moment. How did we meet each other? Can I hear that in your own words?

Bridgett M. Davis: We met because I willed you into my life. (laughter) I knew about Black Film Archive. I knew about it through Twitter like most people. I loved what I could see that you were doing. I saw very clearly that you were focusing on films of earlier decades4 and I made a mental note. I had two thoughts. "Oh, I wish she could know about “Naked Acts,” and also, if she makes it to the '90s, I'll have a reason to tell her." That was my thought and I let it go. I was used to that. I was used to thinking, "Oh, there'll be a list out there and “Naked Acts” won't be on it."

It wasn't unusual for me to think, “Oh, maybe I'll have a reason to tell her about the film," but of course, I didn't have to because you reached out to me. It was so beautiful because I think you might have said, "This is who I am." You introduced yourself and you told me you had just seen the film in the archive. What I loved so much was that I could say to you, "I know exactly who you are" because I was hoping you would know about “Naked Acts” and that really started everything between us.

Maya: I think so. A part of the beauty from my own perspective is that I was also seeking “Naked Acts.” It wasn't like “Naked Acts” was hidden. When I saw it, within a few minutes, I'm sitting down scribbling, "My God, how do I have the privilege of working on getting this film back out in the world?" To reach out to you was just to say, "What can I do? How can I use my power to ensure that this film can see another life?"

Bridgett: I tell you, when you asked me was I interested, of course, I was like, "Yes," but I had no concept, really, of what could happen. I had no idea that it could do what it ended up doing. I thought, "Oh, this is great. Maybe it'll get redistributed on DVD for a new generation and that would be wonderful." That was my thought. A restoration was not in my mind at all when you reached out originally. Certainly theatrical, that was beyond anything I would have imagined for the film.

Maya: I think what's so beautiful is that all of these steps happened with such ease in a way that I want to make clear that ease is not usually what happens in restorations. Often the elements are missing or the funder hasn't come through because restorations, of course, cost money. Before I get ahead of myself and talk about that, I do want to point for the record that something I made clear, after you said yes and after Milestone agreed, then I came back to you and I said, "Would it be okay if I'm involved with the release?" How did you feel about that then and how do you feel about that now?

Bridgett: I'm not even sure we had dinner yet. I don't even know if I had met you in person yet. I was so clear that that's what I wanted. I knew enough. I didn't know you well, but I knew enough. What did I know? I knew that you were an advocate, a genuine advocate for Black film. Already that was enough to make me want you to be part of it, but I also could tell that you really cared about the film; the way you spoke about it, the way you literally reached out. Just that act alone said so much to me. You could have seen the film and liked it and decided you would maybe write about it at some point. You didn't do that. You said, "This film should be out in the world."

What an act of agency. Really, it felt like such a vote of confidence in my work, in what I had created that I knew enough to know I needed. That if you were offering to be an advocate, I wanted that because I was entering into a dynamic with a distributor, I didn't expect it to be problematic. It wasn't. Also, I knew it would be smart to have someone who's on my side, on my team advocating for me.

Maya: I think this brings up a really interesting point, which is that so much of how distribution happens is that a Black film will come out, and then White people, because so often, that is just the nature of the world, that White people will make decisions on behalf of film that reflect selling it to a White audience. What I was very clear about at the very beginning, and what I'm always clear about, is that this Black film has served a Black audience, why don't we think with them in mind?

Bridgett: Which was radical, quite frankly. It feels in some ways like I've known you forever, but it's really been just two and a half years?

Maya: Two and a half years. In all of this time, we've talked a lot about distribution and its practices. We have really landed on agreeing that so much of what you can hope for as a Black filmmaker is that a White person has a vote of confidence on it. That all of these distribution channels depend on each other. So much of how distribution happens, it means that you need a New York Times review. That most likely, especially at the time of when “Naked Acts” was originally released, that a White critic [and programmer] has to believe in the film.

Bridgett: Yes. You need the double whammy of a Sundance screening, certainly back in the '90s you did, and then you needed a [Variety critic] to come out of that screening and say amazing things about it. That then would give it an audience with distributors. You needed both. If you had one and not the other, which is what I had, it wasn't enough.

Maya: What does it mean to repair the knowledge of a film? Because I feel very fortunate that you are here and you can advocate and express how you feel about the film and filmmaking yourself. I think something that's always been a scorn by my side, if you will, is that the circumstances around “Naked Acts” meant that you had to pivot and do something else. That you, a person whose whole life you wanted to be a screenwriter.. and that so much of the Black dream of filmmaking depends on whiteness in the very way that the world is constructed. What does it mean to repair your own ambition and public knowledge about this Black film? How does that register to you?

Bridgett: It's extraordinary. Not just because there's a possibility that I might be able to make another film, a second film. That's beautiful in and of itself, that I can have that possibility out there for the first time in decades. That's great, but really, it's validated. That's the strongest word I can use because I knew everyone who invested in and gave themselves of the film knew in real time that we were doing something important. All of us knew we were saying something that hadn't been said, and we also all knew that Black audiences were hungry for it. All of those things were true and we pushed it as far as we could with the limitations of what we had, the festival circuit, basically. When that ended, then the ability to get it out in front of audiences ended. This is not just validating because, as Richard Brody told us all, it really places the film in the cannon where it belonged. Now, it, what is his word? It reimagines? No, what is the word he used so beautifully?

Maya: The rediscovery of “Naked Acts” expands film history.

Bridgett: Expands film… Yes, that is as exciting to me as anything that you have to come to film history differently now because it's been expanded because what had been omitted is now included. It changes your whole understanding of specifically, he didn't say Black film, he said film history. There's that, but also certainly what people thought of as the films by Black filmmakers back in the day was not complete. It wasn't complete, not because an artist like me stepped forward to put a new voice out there and to say some things that I felt needed to be said, but because gatekeepers kept it out of the conversation.

I'm so excited and grateful and thrilled and yes, once again, feeling lots of validation because what I originally wanted is happening. It's now happening. In 2024, my film moved through the country. Two dozen American cities. People got to see this film. Never mind, nine or so other international screens. That was always my hope for it that it would find its audiences, plural, but it is a little different from just, oh, I wanted distribution. I feel as though what it has today, it couldn't have had maybe even originally, is context and lived lives so that people really understand and appreciate what they're seeing because they now know it's rare. When someone sees my film for the second time having seen it in the '90s, they often say to me, "Oh, I forgot how much was there and how relevant it still is." Which is another way of saying we don't have enough in the culture that's addressing these issues still. In a beautiful way, it's meaning is richer for me now.

Maya: That's so beautiful. I wonder if you can take us to-- I know, of course, Julie Dash presents “Naked Acts” to the world. A part of that, when she agreed to sign on as a presenter, you reminded me that so much of this is exalted from you seeing Daughters of the Dust at film form in the '90s. Can you take me back to that full-circle moment?

Bridgett: Oh, it was beautiful. It was January [‘92]. Long lines out front for this film. I finally got in. One of the last people to get a ticket that day, so I was in the front row, but it didn't matter because those images literally washed over me. I was, I believe, at the very beginning stages of writing “Naked Acts” and learning filmmaking. I was in the throes of figuring it all out. It was very exciting for me, but I hadn't understood the extent of possibility for myself until I saw Daughters of the Dust. It hit me so hard. I was like, "Whoa, wait a minute. I can do anything. I don't have to limit myself. I can go all in on what I really care about." My film is not like Daughters at all, but it is in the sense that it's all me. It's all my issues, my voice, the things I was obsessed over. It was so about giving me permission to just do what I really felt was important to me because up until then, I had some underlying sense of what was allowed and not allowed in the space of Black film. We didn't have that many examples at that point. Not many at all, really. In… '92, there weren't very many examples at all. Not contemporary ones. There was a sense that certain kind of films got made. What might have happened had I not seen that film right at that nascent point for me.

Maya: That's so fair, and then to have [Julie Dash present it]5 over 30 years later.

Bridgett: It's very poetic because for Julie Dash to essentially validate the film and provide what is really a beautiful endorsement of it means so much to me because I know what her film meant to the creation of mine.

Maya: It's true poetry. I think so much of Black film history is a call and response, right?

Bridgett: Yes.

Maya: Julie Dash put out a call and in many ways, “Naked Acts” response to that call.

Bridgett: I love that, she put out a call. Yes, she really did. I had an experience when I showed my film. Actually, it was just a talk I gave in Philly for Seen magazine after I'd written an essay for them. They had a launch party and a young woman came up to me, she had seen the film, and she said that, "Your film's now my favorite film. I'm a film student and it's really just changed what I think I can do." Of course, this made me think of myself in that movie theater at Film Forum in 1992. I thought, if there'd been no re-distribution, if there'd been no re-release of this film, if it hadn't had a re-discovery, she wouldn't be standing in front of me saying that.

One person, maybe more, but one person I know of went to that archive. That is what enabled this film to have a new life. What does that mean? It means that people like that young woman, that young filmmaking student could see the film. You didn't just see the film, you read my materials.

Maya: I did. (Laughs)

Bridgett: I was like, "Wow."

Maya: I was in the weeds.

Bridgett: It's like you're also a student of film too.

Maya: I want[ed] to know the full context of who you are. You happen to be the first person I've ever approached about getting distribution, but in the months and years since, I've approached a few people who have essentially said to me, "Not every rock is meant to be unturned. I appreciate what you're doing. It's no disrespect. It's just I've been so burned by this industry that I don't know if I have the heart to potentially go through heartbreak again. “

Bridgett: See, I wasn't that way at all. You saw… Because in a way, “Naked Acts” had a charmed existence even in the beginning. I would say, given the fact that it got made, it got funded, it got completed all of that was unusual. I have a dear friend who was Kathleen Collins's student. Her film never made it out of the can. You see, and that wasn't an unusual thing to happen. People told me, "Bridgett that was fast." They felt that because I started shooting in the fall of '94 and I was screening a cut of the film at the Black Harvest Film Fest in Chicago the following July, everyone said to me, "That is fast."

It felt charmed in a lot of ways in the whole making of it. Of course, it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but the feelings around making it were all powerful because it really was a community experience that shifted everything for me in terms of what you can do when you come together to create art. That feeling is what lingered for me around the film. Yes, it should have been treated better in terms of distribution, but how surprised was I? I was more hurt than surprised.

Maya: That's really fair. In this year of touring “Naked Acts” around the world, I think the thing that sticks with me is how many people are so moved after seeing the film that they are suddenly like, "I need to go create something. I need to go do something… I need to go call a friend." We won't know what it inspires, but we do know from touring the world with it that people feel like this is a call for them. The same way Julie Dash was a call for you, that this is now a call for another generation of filmmakers or artists to make something that, if I could sum it all up, that exists without translation.

Bridgett: Definitely. To see people still moved by it, it's so incredible. People are even inspired by my crazy story of it taking 30 years.

Maya: Yes, because it's never too late. The biggest blessing, and I'm going to say it again, is that you are here to speak for yourself. Something that I know that I will put on the record too is that when we met, you had just retired from being a professor at Baruch College. You said to yourself, "I need to make space for something to happen. For something else, more writing, all the things," and I come to you a few months later. That's cosmic.

Bridgett: It was completely cosmic. The retirement wasn't even official. You're like you retire and you don't have to teach that next semester and it doesn't become official until January. I met you in October. It wasn't even "official", but yes, when I tell you how strong that feeling was, both strong and amorphous.I just kept thinking, "I need to free myself for the next thing."

Maya: Oh my gosh, and the next thing came knocking almost immediately. [laughs]

Bridgett: It came immediately and I was like, "Ooh." Even then, I didn't know the extent or the magnitude of what we were going to do, but I remember thinking, "Oh, okay, I've got more time now to help with this," which I thought was a minor thing. I had no idea what it was going to involve, and yet, I was here for it. There was no tension of having to balance it with my job, so I can just enjoy it. Yes, I can come and look at color corrections. Yes, I can be there for the premiere of the film after it's been restored. Sure. I could travel to Rotterdam, no problem. We can talk about the poster design all you want. I'm here.

Maya: I will say every detail was so exacting. I think that's something to really talk about, is that there was so much discussion, not just about how to present this older film and make it new, of course, that's a consideration, but “Naked Acts” didn't even need that much [work.] It speaks across generations. At least, one of my things and what I alluded to earlier is that, how can we ensure that Black people want to hang this poster on their wall? I was so clear about that being my goal. What does that look like?

Bridgett: I have to say this, you were not quite a year old when we wrapped on December 4th of 1994. Because you came of age when you did, because of who you are, because of your influences, because of your intellect, because of where we are in the culture, because of your millennial self, you were ready to provide context for why this film was of value in a way that even I, as the filmmaker, could not have done. You brought that, that bled into your consulting for the film because you brought your contextual understanding of what this was. You knew more than any of us what this was and how important it would be that we were doing this. You knew it in a way, I think, the rest of us didn't quite because of what you brought to it.

Your passion, your knowledge, your interest, your life's work. That manifested in many ways, and at least of which was your insistence that the poster should be something that brought me joy, that made people want to hang it on their walls, ie, that reflected the complexity and beauty of the film as you saw it. You got into it with me.

Maya: I will say, for the record, this poster took probably three months to make.

Bridgett: It was the one thing that ended up [taking the longest.] It wasn't the sound or writes or music or issues with the [film] negative. It wasn't any of those big things that usually trip up a restoration or release. It wasn't about rights being tied up or hopefully, my ego wasn't too large in the process and getting in the way. It was the poster.

Maya: It was the poster. I think something that often happens to Black films upon re-release is that it's like, "Okay, we got the rights. It's time to go." I think you [only] have the opportunity to present something once. What is that one thing we want people to take away? This is the visual cue that announces the film.

Bridgett: Oh, you slowed that process down. (Laughs).

Maya: I did. I'll take full credit for that. I thought we only have one chance. I can't have this film come back out into the world and I felt like we didn't give it our all. That's what we're here for. It's proudly hanging on my wall.

Bridgett: Very proudly hanging on mine.

Maya: I think one of the biggest honors of my life is my name being even loosely associated with “Naked Acts” because the film is just such a wonder. It really cracked me open. To see new possibilities for what cinema can be. I'm so often asked, "What's that one film that you feel like that changed how you felt about Black film history?" and what I can finally say is that “Naked Acts” is that film.

Bridgett: Oh, Maya, that's saying a lot. Coming from the woman who, when I met her, said, "Oh, yes, I go to the movies twice a week."

Maya: (Laughs) I do have a final question for you, though. I think that your gift in this world is taking grief and moving it into art. Many people do not have that gift. Of course, you have this fabulous book coming out about your sister who passed. As you think about “Naked Acts,” and you think about this book how is that work intertwined for you?

Bridgett: That's a great question. I think that I wanted to create a character in “Naked Acts,” Cece, who acknowledged her loss and her grief, and then found a way to channel it into artistic expression while holding on to her integrity, and that's what I've always tried to do. When it works, I tell you, it has this beautiful way of both honoring your loved one and immortalizing them because people then want to talk about them.

It's early in the process because the reviews are just coming in. The book doesn't come out until March 11th, but one of the early reviews from BookPage, the critics said, "Just as Bridgett Davis said in her sister's memorial service, you're going to feel the same way when you read the book, that Rita was unforgettable." That's all I was trying for.

Maya: Aw, and Rita is. “Naked Acts” is.

Bridgett: Rita raised all the early seed money for “Naked Acts.” She raised all the initial seed money from local businesses that our family had patronized, friends, relatives, coworkers, ex-boyfriends. She went around and got all the original seed money for me that enabled me to launch into the project. She's all over the film. She's listed as an associate producer. This is all intertwined for me. I'm honoring something that we all did collectively and so many people who contributed to “Naked Acts” are not here in a physical sense anymore, but listen, I don't have to tell you about the power of film and its way of capturing people for eternity.

Maya: Wow. That's exactly it. Oh, I'm so honored.

Bridgett: I'm really grateful.

“Naked Acts” is available on DVD/Blu-Ray today. “Love, Rita” hits stores on March 11, 2025. You can pre-order it here.

Giveaway Rules:

Free Subscribers: Write a comment below and tell me your favorite film by a Black woman to enter. There will be (2) two winners of this prize. The giveaway will comprise of a copy of “Naked Acts” (1996) on DVD or Blu-Ray (I will ask your preference) and a hardback copy of “Love, Rita”. I will draw the two winners on 3/1. I will draw the two names from the comments on 3/1 and contact the lucky winners shortly after.

Paid Subscribers: There will be (2) two winners. You don’t have to do anything to enter. I will randomly draw two names and send you an email. The paid subscriber gift will be a copy of “Naked Acts” (1996) on DVD or Blu-Ray (I will ask your preference), a hardback copy of “Love, Rita,” a copy of a rare Black film book in my personal library, and a handwritten letter of films to watch after “Naked Acts” on Black Film Archive. I will draw the two names on 3/1 and contact the lucky winners then.

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If we’ve ever had an extended conversation before, you would know I often find myself thinking of children’s programming across mediums. Programming for children, as I often express, requires us to think of the agency and personhood of the youngest members of our community. Children are demanding and can sniff out when something is phony. They are eager for rich knowledge, deeply hearted, and sensitive to the ways of the world’s truths and falsehoods. In my estimation, good media for children and adults, doesn’t belittle the audience for what they have yet to reckon with.

This year, as the world continues to shift beneath our feet, I am thinking of the birth and rebirth of life. The desperate and hopeful commitments we make to the world and to each other, the everlasting belief that we can stand tall in the face of tyranny and the ways that belief, that courage, is a birthright.

As James Baldwin writes in “The Fire Next Time:” “Long before the Negro child perceives this difference, and even longer before he understands it, he has begun to react to it, he has begun to be controlled by it. Every effort made by the child's elders to prepare him for a fate from which they cannot protect him causes him secretly, in terror, to begin to await, without knowing that he is doing so, his mysterious and inexorable punishment. He must be "good", not only to please his parents and not only to avoid being punished by them; behind their authority stands another, nameless and impersonal, infinitely harder to please, and bottomlessly cruel.”

The question on my mind is: How we will wage against the fire this time? I write this as a new Angeleno and Katrina survivor who knows we are all moments away from being a climate refuge.1 I do not pretend to speak with certainty unearned or in a way to minimize the terrors but in all circumstances, I am reminded that what’s true is what always has been: care and hope can transform destruction into unending possibility. I am also reminded that in moments of tyranny, our imagination for tomorrow, for better, for Black futures is the first thing to be seized.

The films on this year's list are in conversation with the dreams planted at birth to remind us that the only way to build a better Black tomorrow is to imagine it. Art is here to be a guide to construct new modes of understanding, communicating, and believing. In this moment of collective reckoning, Black cinematic history remains a prism of possibility that reflects the times and illuminates the possibilities of our beings. We can conceive of a world outside of the constraints placed upon us.

This guide contains 28 selections from Black Film Archive. You will find visions of resistance, childlike wonder, and unending imagination. We will survive the fire this time and the next, and the time after that. These films are simply a place to start or rediscover gems, to find yourself in or retreat to. I hope this Black History Month greets you with peace, joy, and an abundance of great cinema. You can find the complete list and full descriptions on Black Film Archive here. View the list on Letterboxd here. Please enjoy.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1972) dir. Michael Shultz

It is natural to ask oneself ‘how have extraordinary people become so? What gave them the courage to face the unending terrain? How can we possess that courage?’ In the film, the players (including the luminous Ruby Dee) are putting on a production chronicling the life of Lorraine Hansberry. The play, which is a collection of Hansberry’s unpublished writing, remains a tribute to the power of artistic spirit and the ways it transforms all who see it. The Nina Simone song of the same name was inspired by the work.

One Way or Another / De cierta manera(1974) dir. Sara Gomez

What happens after the revolution comes? How will we love? What will we seek? Gomez’s hybrid masterwork taking place in the aftermath of post-Revolutionary sings as it seeks these questions among its Afro-Cuban leads and the continued work within us all to find the answers within ourselves.

Whitewash (1994) dir. Michael Sporn

Based on the Ntozake Shange children’s book of the same name, “Whitewash” centers a young Black girl who’s life is turned upside down when her face is sprayed white by racist schoolmates. She learns the courage many Black children must possess to carry on.

There Was Always Sun Shining Someplace: Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues (1981) dir. Craig Davidson

With legends of the game giving firsthand accounts, “There Was Always Sun Shining Someplace” offers a look into the courage of the players and the legacy of triumph under forced segregation.

Freeman (1977) dir. Llyod Richards

Can we be all that we seek? That is the question at the heart of the drama directed by the great Lloyd Richards centering the calamity of ambition and being misunderstood.

The Final Insult (1997) dir. Charles Burnett

With his tender hand at the helm, Burnett masterfully blends truth and fiction to lay bare the daily cruelties of the unhoused population in Los Angeles; those crushed by a system never meant to protect them. With Burnett’s signature poetry, this portrait is sensitive and dynamic.

Cosmic Slop (1994) dir. Reginald Hudlin

With an angry dynamism, Hudlin offers a vision of aliens who demand America hands off their Black people to outer space so they may meet a new reality.

Sisters in the Struggle (1991) dirs. Dionne Brand & Ginny Strikeman

Black women across the political struggle share their insights and truths in this Canadian featurette from brilliant writer Dionne Brand and her co-director. The film serves as a reminder that there is a current of the changing same across history, we can learn from the intellectual maps illustrated here.

Woodcutters of the Deep South (1973) dir. Lionel Rogosin

Through the lushness of the South’s backwoods, Black and white workers lay down arms to come together on a compromise that makes clear their enemy is not their coworker but the forces of capital that keep them at odds.

Just an Overnight Guest (1983) dir. Gina Blumenfeld

After a young girl is abandoned, a family (with parents played by Rosalind Cash and Richard Roundtree) find a way to take her in as they all expand their definitions of family, care, and commitment.

Cornbread, Earl, and Me (1975) dir. Joseph Manduke

When a young member of the neighborhood is tragically slain by police, a community tries to find a way to come together and work through the political and emotional terrain left in the wake of the death. With the screen debut of Laurence Fishburne, this tender portrait has been beloved by Black families across time.

Gay Black Group (1983)

A meeting space is as much a place to gather as it is an opprotunity to confront truths about the world. The formation of the Gay Black Group in the London bookshop Gay’s the World, provided a place for gay Black communities in 1980s to be. The film features a young Isaac Julien.

Voguing: The Message (1989) dirs. David Bronstein, Dorothy Low, Jack Walworth

Traces the history of voguing from its Black queer roots to its emerging national presence.

Brick by Brick (1982) dir. Shirikiana Aina

A searing, tender portrait of the ever-gentrifying Washington, D.C. and those who must pay the ultimate costs for change: the long time Black residents of the Chocolate city.

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (1978) dir. Jack Smight

Claudia McNeil, Janet MacLachlan, and Morgan Freeman star in this tender, beloved coming of age tale centering on a girl and her family’s plight during the aftermath of the Great Depression.

Cracks (1975)

In this short from “Sesame Street,” the beloved children’s program created for inner city Black youth, a Black child uses their imagination to think of a world beyond the crack in their walls.

Paul Robeson: Here I Stand (1999) dir. St. Clair Bourne

“Get them to sing your song and they will want to know who you are.” In this tender film we see the portrait of an artist and the sacrifice and love one must be prepared for in order to maintain being one.

Top of the Heap (1972) dir. Christopher St. John

A hero to none and searching for respect from all, Black policeman George Lattimer raises hell when he’s overlooked for a promotion within the police force. Coming to grips with the depths of institutional racism and the sociopolitical violence of being a cop, George begins to imagine more for himself and the world.

O Happy Day: The Early Days of Black Gay Liberation (1996) dir. Charles Lofton

Using an imaginative approach to storytelling, “O Happy Day” explores the real connections to 1960s queer liberation movements and the Civil Rights Movement.

To Dance with Olivia (1997) dir. Bruce Pittman

How do we carry on in face of tragedy? In “To Dance with Olivia” a husband and wife seek the answers as the husband’s work unearths untended to wounds.

Modern Times: The Way of All Flesh (1997) dir. Adam Curtis

What happens when a Black woman’s DNA is believed to be the secret of how to conquer death? You may know the story of Henrietta Lacks but this documentary interviews those who made the decisions and investigates the unending cost of eugenics, white supremic thought, and lack of healthcare justice.

The Case of the Elevator Duck (1972) dir. Joan Micklin Silver

In this quirky and cute tale, a young boy in a city apartment building discovers a duck and allows his curiosity and skills to guide him to the duck’s owner.

Blind Faith (1998) dir. Ernest Dickerson

When a young Black boy is accused of straggling a white boy to death, his uncle (Courtney B. Vance) takes his case as the family must rally to figure out the truth and save the boy’s life. With Lonette McKee, Kadeem Hardison, and Charles S. Dutton.

A Day in the Life of Willie Faust, or Death on the Installment Plan (1972) dir. Jamaa Fanaka

Playing with and against the expecations of the era’s Blaxploitaitons, Jamaa Fanaka’s student film is an explosion of form, visual texture, and storytelling.

The Magnificent Major (1977) dir. Nick De Noia

In a dystopian alternate reality when reading is banned, a young girl (Tisha Campbell) discovers the importance of knowledge and reading.

Bone (1972) dir. Larry Cohen

When Bone (the always brilliant Yaphet Kotto) breaks into the home of a wealthy, white Beverly Hills couple, the trio goes on an unexpected exploration of class and circumstance.

A Change of Mind (1969) dir. Robert Stevens

Post the United States’ Civil Rights movement, there were a rush of films assessing the future of Blackness in America. “A Change of Mind” ventures into a new territory by centering a Black man who undergoes an operation to have a wealthy white man’s brain implanted into him.

Baldwin’s Nigger (1968) dir. Horace Ove

"White men lynched Negroes, knowing them to be their sons. White women watched men being lynched, knowing them to be their lovers,“ Baldwin exclaims during a lecture that sets the scene for this documentary’s wide-ranging exploration of race and racism. With Dick Gregory.

All films can be seen on Black Film Archive here.

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What does representational politics mean to you and your work? 

As a child I longed to be represented by the media I consumed. It is the way of children. I, a Native New Orleanian, was in middle school when Hurricane Katrina disrupted the way of American life and in return burst my idea of representation’s endless possibility. People in my direct community were flattened to one-note illustrations of their humanity. Instead of being viewed as Black New Orleanians hoping to survive a once-in-a-lifetime storm they were purported to be savages, looters, and criminals. The news reports that painted us that way circulated widely and has had endless effects on how New Orleanians and Black survival is portrayed across all narrative media. Representational politics around cinema, as it is widely discussed, requires us to be flattened to another’s idea of who we can be. “To be entrapped in other people’s fictions puts us under arrest,” Toni Cade Bambara succinctly says in her guiding essay “Why Black Cinema?”

Representations value, in my opinion, is not in the ways visibility can be weaponized as a silencing dagger (or beacon) but in its ability to be challenged, contested, and contextualized. Often these conversations boil down to believing the only way forward for Black media is to be visible in a positive manner. But I do not think cultural representation can be positive or negative,1 nor that racial codes as we understand them intracommunally nor externally should limit how we define ourselves on screen or otherwise. To be seen by media is something, a special something, but to demand more of our work is the only way the fullness of our humanity can be visible on screen.2 It is not in my personal politics to organize my desires by notions of inferiority or lack. When I view a film for Black Film Archive, I am often thinking of the cultural / societal codes the film is trying to convey, the actor who is asked to convey them, and how the film registers with me in an emotional and historical context.

I think about films I consider among my favorites like Fronza Woods’s “Killing Time” or Powell and Pressburger’s “A Matter of Life and Death”3 These films are not my favorite because I render visibility of myself in them but because they — deeply considered explorations of humanity’s possibilities — render me infinitely anew as I view or think of them.

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…If that’s so, what do you think about trauma in Black film? 

Many of the conversations about trauma in Black film rely on flattening it, as I mention above. Consider this: There is a film from the 1970s I love. It centers a Black single mother on welfare with six children trying to survive the grittiness of Harlem. The film, Claudine (1974) —which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month— is a revelation that stems from a scenario many consider ‘traumatic.’ Infused by the pulsating sounds of Gladys Knight and the Pips, the romantic drama makes the rhythm of Black life and love legible without negating the hardships that are often wrapped up in the legibility. Our motifs, thoughts, sensuality, and desires are not second fiddle but the main event as it showcases the ways love is possible in a world where Black people are often asked to make impossible choices.

As I say in Black Film Archive’s original note:

As debates about Black film’s association with trauma rage on, I hope Black Film Archive can offer a different lens through which to understand Black cinematic history, one that takes into consideration the full weight of the past. Through this lens, it is easy to see that the notion that “Black films are only traumatic” is based on generalizations and impressions of recent times (often pinned to the success of films like “12 Years a Slave”) rather than a deeper engagement with history, which reveals that “slave films” constitute only a small percentage of the Black films that have been made. I hope conversations evolve to consider the expansive archive of radical ideas and expression found in Black films’ past.

….My theory about trauma in Black film is akin to Frankie Beverly and Maze’s “Joy and Pain,” one cannot exist without the other. I created Black Film Archive: Tenderness in Black Film microsite as a response to this curiosity. Writing in my introductory note:

In the February 1926 issue of Crisis Magazine, W.E.B Du Bois poses ‘a questionnaire’ to the magazine’s readership about the ways Black people are represented in art. “What are Negroes to do when they are continually painted at their worst and judged by the public as they are painted?” the pioneer scholar asks.

That question is echoed in the post-George Floyd Black audience that asked if Black films’s only offering is trauma. This ponderance is the tenant to which the Black Film Archive: Tenderness in Black Film exhibition responds directly. How does tenderness– defined here as pointed moments of affection where Black possibility, transformation, and connection bloom– offer a new mode of understanding our filmic past, present, and future?

As pioneering Black film director Oscar Micheaux writes, “I have always tried to make my photoplays present the truth, to lay before the race a cross section of its own life, to view the colored heart from close range.” In this close read, new truths about Black cinema and ourselves are revealed.

Which is to say, I am interested in films about all subjects and facets of Black life: slavery, crime, ‘hood films,’ and anything in between or beyond because we have only scratched the surface on presenting Black life on screen, ‘trauma’ and all. I want to see films that unmask Black life; films that mirrors what I know to be true and truths I have not yet been able to confront; films that don’t bend to propagandic desires to flatten us into assumed nothingness as media without tension, conflict, and truth would.

What do you imagine the future of Black film is? 

Claudine (1974) was produced by Ossie Davis’s Third World Cinema Corporation —whose mission was to create and produce films from a ‘minority perspective.’ The corporation filled most production jobs with talent of color as their organizing principle was to disrupt conventional narratives from the bottom up. To me, the future of Black film has artists, programmers, critics, cultural spectators, and the infinite others have a relationship to Black film’s past and work together to reach its future. There are organizations that artists can model themselves after, like Third World Cinema… that make sense in today’s everchanging film reality. There are an endless amount of lessons to learn from Black cinema’s independent movements and negotiations in Hollywood that can inform today’s artists.

I believe Black film’s future is all of us recognizing that art— its creation and engagement— is something larger than our individual selves and requires care in every mode from creation, distribution, exhibition, and viewing; I believe that our tools of care must always expand as the form does.

What do I believe Black film’s future is? …I believe it to be infinite if artists are given the space to create and decisionmakers trust them to do so without squandering their vision. …I believe it to be infinite if Black critics are allowed to challenge the ways of Black cinema without it seeming as a negative representation of the race. …I believe it to be infinite if audiences were consistently delivered what is promised and owed. …I believe it to be infinite…

In the comments below, tell me a film you love (any film at all—old or new) and I will give you a recommendation from Black Film Archive to watch this week.

Friends, I often record voice notes to myself as a point of reflection …

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There is a scene that burns in my mind’s eye when I think of Black cinema’s power. The opening images of a lens surveying the streets of New York City looking for its next fixture. The camera sets its gaze on a man, filled with bravado and suavity, commanding the streets of Time Square after ascending from the underbelly of New York’s subway; the lens dances as it shows us the man is equally a part of the underbelly and above it. Outfitted with a tan leather jacket that is only outmatched by his knowledgeable gaze and stride, we meet John Shaft and are introduced to the transfixing Richard Roundtree as Isaac Hayes’s theme song swells. Through the dizzying and buzzing survey of 1970s New York, we come to understand Shaft, a Black detective, owns the city.1 

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Cobbs, a prolific Drama-Desk award-winning1 theater actor, was a bridge for Black talent of yesterday and today as he worked for 5 decades on the screen and stage. His first acting role was in the Negro Ensemble Company’s ‘Ride a Black Horse,’2 from there he planted his roots in the Black Arts scene as a board member of burgeoning Black arts organizations, featured player, stage director3, and esteemed peer. The Ohio Native’s first role on screen was in “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974), a role he was cast in just four years after dedicated his life to acting.

Though Cobbs is often boiled down to being of the known-by-face-and-not-by-name variety, his extensive career of over 200 credits reminds us that there are no small parts for Black actors who make a way out of no way. Each life, each career, and role—especially in the interconnected world of Black artistry— awakens possibility in another peer, generation, and audience.

As Wendell Pierce writes, Cobbs was a “father figure, a griot, an iconic artist, that mentored me by the way he led his life as an actor.”

Here are two films to remember him by:

Tuesday Morning Ride (1995)

Bill Cobbs and the legendary Ruby Dee co-star in this this Oscar-nominated short as an aging couple who have reached an impasse. Based on the story by Arna Bontemps, Cobbs shines as the tender connecting tissue as the couple indulge in one day of pleasure. Watch here.

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Always Outnumbered (1998)

Based on the Walter Mosley novel of the same name, Bill Cobbs portrays an elder dying of cancer who pushes the hardboiled Socrates Fortlow (Laurence Fishburne) to reconsider how he can make a difference in his community. In this wonderful HBO film— co-starring Natalie Cole, Cicely Tyson, Bill Nunn, and Bill Duke, among others —Bill Cobbs showcases the fullness of his capacity as moral center and a grounding force that made him shine on screen. Watch here.

 If you’re looking for even more films to see? I wrote at length on the 1989 “Looking for Langston” and other queer films in 2022:

Anemone Me (1990) dir. Suzan-Lori Parks & Bruce Hainley

Co-written and co-directed by Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, “Anemone Me” centers a blind Black boy bodybuilder (Fred Anderson) that falls in love with a merman (Peter Hermann) that washes up ashore. Director Todd Haynes serves as an assistant director on this Christine Vachon-produced film. 

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Valerie (1975) dir. Joseph Horning

Film as a living document of life gains new meaning with this intimate portrayal of Valerie, trans sex worker turned housewife, who defines herself—her dreams, her history, her lived experiences, her work, her love, and her desires—  for herself.

Ife (1993) dir. H. Lenn Keller

“My name is Ife, I came here from Paris one year ago and heard San Francisco is a very gay city” opens the 1993 short about a young lesbian hoping to make her mark in one of the queer capitals of the world as long as the mark doesn’t lead to love.

Vintage: Families of Value (1995) dir. Thomas Allen Harris 

One of the earliest manifestations of love is the mirror image of yourself as reflected in your family’s portrait of you. In Thomas Allen Harris’s “Vintage: Families of Value” the director puts a tender lens on himself and two other Black families coming to terms with members of their unit being queer.

Janine (1990) dir. Cheryl Dunye

“I always wanted to be more” Dunye says to the camera in the confessional documentary, bearing her heart, as she journeys through her school-aged attraction to a wealthy, white girl.

All the films can be viewed on Black Film Archive here.

+Some news: Tonight at BAM Cinema in Brooklyn, “Naked Acts” (1996) has its 4K restoration premiere.1 This moment comes 1.5 years after I first sent a DM to director Bridgett M. Davis in awe after seeing her sole feature film in an archive and scribbled in my research notebook, “What do I need to do to get this distributed?” I soon showed the film to Milestone Films and a week later the contracts were signed to distribute it. And now, tonight, 30 years after production first began, the film premieres with distribution for the first time. (You can hear how it happened from Bridgett’s perspective in Roger Ebert.)

In my estimation, “Naked Acts,” is the most important Black woman’s film discovery since "Losing Ground.” Richard Brody from the New Yorker writes in his recent review that the rediscovery expands film history, saying:

Davis’s film, made at a time when there were few Black women filmmakers, exalts the hard-won breakthrough of self-depiction, of controlling the means of production; it opens pathways to a future cinema more radical than itself.

It remains a great gift to serve Black films and filmmakers. I’ve been proud to serve as a creative consultant for this release from discovery to distribution and I sincerely hope you’ll join me at the cinema to check out “Naked Acts.” All showtimes, now and in the future, can be viewed here. I will keep you all updated as the film is available to stream and makes its way to DVD/Blu-Ray.

NEW YORK 
Friday, June 14 - Thursday, June 24 
Brooklyn Academy of Music 
Q&A after the 7pm screenings on the 14th & 15th with Bridgett Davis 
 

LOS ANGELES 
June 18, 20, and 22 
American Cinematheque @ Los Feliz 3
 

AUSTIN, TX 
June 19 and 24 
Austin Film Society 
 

SEATTLE, WA 
June 20-23, June 26-27 
Northwest Film Forum