Film Release Wishlist

 

In the Morning film poster.

While waiting for Criterion to announce the blu ray/DVD release of Alice Diop’s incredible Saint Omer (two of the five titles have their intended dates already), I could not resist compiling together this small list of films that are currently inaccessible via streaming or physical channels. 

Some rarer films are on YouTube channels (aka Black film activism) such as reelblack. Maya Cade’s Black Film Archive aides in ensuring that Black films do not slip beneath the cracks. The gatekeepers certainly do not want us celebrating ourselves for good reason— for they set up the goalposts to what is considered worthy cinema and what deserves to be celebrated and preserved. A newer resource called Just Watch lets you know where film/TV are currently streaming, but some do not show up (already demonstrating our erasure). IMDb has limited information including photographs, stills, and cast/crew involvement. Thus, financial pitfalls too cause these films not to see the light, let alone a streaming platform— short films having an even trickier slope, especially since sometimes these are a director’s student works. 

Black women stories are as essential and significantly valuable as the stories white filmmakers create. Yet the filmmaking cannon begs to differ. 

Loretta Devine and Obaka Adedunyo in Will. DP: possibly Jessie Maple, IMDb has limited information on this film besides the questionable 5.5/10 score. 

Jessie Maple, the first Black woman admitted into the New York camera union, has several seemingly vaulted films. Will (1981) a Harlem based drama about a former basketball star turned heroin addict was the first independent drama film shot by a Black woman (and film debut of Loretta Devine) and Twice As Nice (1989) about twin students at Columbia University competing to be the first woman to join the MBA basketball team— Maple’s second achievement/feat. These are impossible to find yet very important for film buffs. In 2013, Will was restored by the New York Women In Film and Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund— may be a positive sign in our direction for a future release. 

A humorous still from Ayoka Chenzira’s Hair Piece: A Film For Nappy Headed People about “Turn Back” weather. Straight/relaxed Black hair has a timeliness to it (a Cinderella element as the film suggests) and the consequences can be dire in precipitation, mainly rain. DP: Ann Chapman. 

Once the hair reverts to its natural state, the girl’s smile has turn upside down and her posture is slouched, depressed. DP: Ann Chapman.

The first Black woman animator Ayoka Chenzira (director of Alma’s Rainbow (1993) currently streaming on Criterion and Kanopy) helmed a piece on Black hair inspired by her living in Brooklyn— a short experimental animation called Hair Piece: A Film For Nappy Headed People (1984); included in the National Film Registry in 2018. On Becoming A Woman (1986) is another animation short unavailable. 

The UCLA Film & Television Archive works diligently to share materials on their YouTube channel. Other alumni works longed to see are Alile Sharon Larkin’s Your Children Come Back to You (1979) and Dreadlocks and the Three Bears (1991), Jacqueline Shearer’s A Minor Education, and Stormé Bright Sweet’s The Single Parent Family: Images In Black (1977)— the latter available on the campus premises like Melvonna Ballenger’s unfinished Nappy Headed Lady. Although Your Children Come Back to You and A Minor Education are two films previously viewed at a program, other generations need access to these beautiful works that show the testament to our collective strengths and phenomenal progress in the face of existing in an unjust society. 

 

A still from Jacqueline Shearer’s A Minor Altercation. Other information unknown. 

Leal (C. J. Lindsay) and Zuri (De’Adre Aziza) in Nefertite Nguvu’s In The Morning. DP: Arthur Jafa of Daughters of the Dust and Crooklyn.

A few years ago, back at a Blackstar Film Festival panel, filmmaker Nefertite Nguvu talked about the pros and cons of making In The Morning (2014)— a film shot on low budget and in eight days. The gorgeously  lit film centers nine Black friends in Brooklyn navigating through love and relationships, people breaking up, another moving abroad. With stars like the brilliant Emayatzy Corinealdi (of my favorite film Middle of Nowhere) and Numa Perrier (writer/director of Jezebel) and positive word of mouth buzz, In the Morning deserves to be in conversations about Black romance in cinema beyond the usual fare (primarily directed by men). How can it be in any such dialogue if not present for audiences to indulge in? 

Jet, an ambitious Black law student, is torn between chasing her dreams or staying in the traditionalist women role. 

Maya Angelou, screenwriter of the TV film adaptation of her own autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and director of Down on the Delta, has several works unavailable including two pieces from an anthology series called Visions (1976-1980). Angelou directed Tapestry / Circles (both aired on December 30, 1976), two hard-to-find mid-length episodic films about Black girls and women that would instill necessary wisdom to the generations coming up today. Tapestry is about a young woman torn between her lover and best friend who want her to stick to the ideal female role versus her own career dreams. Circles focuses on a very religious grandmother’s hope for her granddaughter to stay away from outside provocation.   

José (Garry Cadenat) with his grandmother (Darling Légitimus) look for a promising future in Euzhan Palcy’s Sugar Cane Alley. DP: Dominique Chapuis. 

Sugar Cane Alley (1983), a history making feature by Martinique filmmaker Euzhan Palcy, explores the relationship between a precocious young boy living with his tired grandmother, a sugar plantation worker. It seems to suggest the exhausting previous generation wanting better for the family tree’s future by investing all the time and energy in not just physical labor past a certain age. Educating the youth— using the skill of learning withheld against the oppressed—perhaps propels the grandmother into action. She may be a poor, broken and beaten body, but her clever, sharp mind acknowledges her grandson’s intelligence and will be damned if a cruel history repeats for him. 

This small list hints at probably dozens of films directed by Black women across a global cinematic history; not even brushing the surface of what’s lost or stored away from our hungry eyes. At the theaters nowadays, when viewing their films (far and few in between) my logic remains similar to the refrain of the migrating lover in Toni Morrison’s Sula— to cherish the person fully knowing you intend to never see them again. Within the minutes of a short film or a feature, each frame of the moving picture must be pressed into memory; bearing the saddened notion that this momentous experience will likely not be repeated.