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.
Film Info
United States
1999
92 minutes
Black & White
1.33:1
English
Spine #1274
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Zeinabu irene Davis, in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Wimmin with a Mission Productions, and in conjunction with the Sundance Institute, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Davis, screenwriter Marc Arthur Chéry, and director of photography Pierre H. L. Désir Jr.
Q&As with members of the cast and crew
Two short films by Davis, Crocodile Conspiracy (1986) and Pandemic Bread (2023), the latter with audio commentary featuring Davis and cast and crew members and descriptive audio
Interview with Davis from 2021
New program about select archival photographs and adinkra and vèvè symbols in the film
Trailer
English subtitles and intertitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, and English descriptive audio
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Racquel Gates, a director’s note, and a conversation between Davis and artist Alison O’Daniel about the process of captioning the film
New cover by Polly Dedman
