In his groundbreaking new book The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films, author, programmer, and Criterion Collection Curatorial Director Ashley Clark embarks on a survey of important and influential Black films spanning more than 100 years and 30 countries.
YBCA and BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition) are thrilled to welcome Clark to introduce this expansive work to the Bay Area through a screening of Compensation, directed by Zeinabu irene Davis, a landmark of American independent cinema that confronts the social forces and prejudices that hinder love. A talkback between Clark and Davis will follow the screening.
Clark will be signing copies of The World of Black Film before the event at 6pm with books available for purchase.
About the film, Compensation
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.
