Compensation
Black Debutantes
•
1h 33m
Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis • 1999 • United States
Starring John Earl Jelks, Michelle A. Banks, Nirvana Cobb
A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and visibility. In dual performances, Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks play an educated dressmaker and an illiterate migrant in 1910s Chicago, and a resilient graphic artist and an endearing librarian living in the same city eight decades later. Employing archival photography, an original score blending ragtime and African percussion, and lyrical editing, Davis deftly intertwines the two couple’s stories, in ways both tender and tragic. COMPENSATION is a landmark of American independent cinema that confronts the social forces and prejudices that hinder love.
Up Next in Black Debutantes
-
Sambizanga
Directed by Sarah Maldoror • 1972 • Angola
Starring Domingos de Oliveira, Elisa Andrade, Jean M’VondoThis revolutionary bombshell by Sarah Maldoror chronicles the awakening of Angola’s independence movement. Based on a true story, SAMBIZANGA follows a young woman as she makes her way from the o...
-
One Way or Another
Directed by Sara Gómez • 1977 • Cuba
Starring Yolanda Cuéllar, Mario Balmaseda, Mario LimontaThe only feature from the radical Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez—who also worked as an assistant director with Agnès Varda and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea before her untimely death at age thirty-one—is an ext...
