In moments of societal and personal weakness, I refer back to June Jordan’s “Civil Wars,”1 her 1981 collection of writing. In the foreword she writes of an idea that was implanted in her after the 1964 Harlem Riots:
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Black Film Archive by Maya S. Cade is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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.
This morning, The New York Times announced some personal news that I have wanted to share with you for a long time: In 2026, I will become the President and sole owner of Milestone Films, the distribution home of brilliant Black works from Charles Burnett, Ayoka Chenzira, Kathleen Collins, Billy Woodberry, Bridgett M. Davis, and countless others from across the filmmaking spectrum.
Bill Gunn and Seret Scott in Kathleen Collins’s masterpiece “Losing Ground,” a film distributed by Milestone Films
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.
A repertory film distribution company is one that focuses on ‘classic films’ and releasing cinema that has been previously made to new audiences as opposed to first run films. Some companies choose to do both repertory films and new run films.
When Black Film Archive launched in August 2021, one of my most asked questions was “well… How do I watch “Killer of Sheep?” – the 1978 masterpiece of every day Black poetry from Charles Burnett. Then a student at UCLA, his student thesis became a monument of Black filmmaking’s possibility and has been long unavailable. In the whisper network that followed the film’s release (and underground sharing of film reels), the film’s title alone conjured images of what the art of filmmaking is and could be. The cinematic siren song drew deep imagery of filmmaking as a revolutionary act. Burnett– in his thirties during the film’s completion– found his revolutionary freedom in using his community in frame—the children he would pass on the streets daily, the doldrums of Black life, the drylongso— and in creation— the neighborhood children captured the sound and helped with every part of the filmmaking process when not on screen. As Burnett told me during my Q&A for the LA premiere of “Killer of Sheep” at the Aero on April 16, 2025, “People always said the community couldn’t do this or that with filmmaking so I wanted to put it in their hands.”
Burnett (b. April 13, 1944) was the first of the infamousL.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?
Black Film Archive by Maya S. Cade is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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.
Charles Burnett oversees the restoration of “Killer of Sheep” in the fall 2024. Photo by me
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.
A photo during the Fall 2024 restoration process of “Killer of Sheep.” A film restoration happens frame by frame. Photo by me.
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.
A still from the 4K restoration of “Killer of Sheep” (Photo courtesy of Milestone Films)
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.
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.
As I wrote last newsletter, LA Rebellion is 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 framework.
This interview series and the ongoing maintenance of Black Film Archive is made possible by the paid subscribers. Thank you, all. If you like work like this, consider subscribing.
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 in 2000.
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 (left) with Nurudafina Pill Abena, Tucki Bailey, and Hattie Gossert while filming “A Powerful Thang” (1991).
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.
A screencap from the original presentation of “Compensation” (1999) of Zeinabu iene Davis’s production company ‘Wimmin With a Mission' Productions’
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.
A still from “Compensation”
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.
A still from “Compensation”
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.
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.
