Original subtitles

[Davis] Hi, this is Zeinabu Irene Davis.

I am the producer, director, and creditor of Compensation.

[Cheryl My name is Marc Chery, and I am the writer and coproducer.

[D�sir] This is Pierre D�sir,

and I am the cinematographer and the storyboard artist.

[Davis] So the title of the film, Compensation,

includes the word "compensation� written in regular print

but also with ASL letters.

The film itself is dedicated to Toni Cade Bambara,

who was a writer

as well as an important influence on many of us,

Scott Eddins, who was one of my students,

who passed away from HIV/AIDS right before the film started,

and then lastly, it was for my auntie Winifred Davis as well.

The music was done by Reginald R. Robertson,

who did all of the ragtime score.

And the original African percussive music was done by Atiba Jali.

Sound design was done in Chicago with Maestro-Matic.

And we had a wonderful art director, Janina,

who came from theater background.

Cathy Cook is an experimental filmmaker as well as a good friend of mine.

We know who this guy is.

[Davis & D�sir chuckle]

-[D�sir] Yeah. -[Davis] He's sitting right here.

And Yvonne was from Chicago.

Yvonne and Dana were both

at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

So they were really instrumental in making sure the film got done.

And the film is introduced by Haitian v�ve� symbols.

The first one is Legba, Keeper of the Crossroads,

because that's how you begin a story.

And then this is the text of the poem "Compensation�

that was written by Paul Laurence Dunbar before he passed away

from tuberculosis in 1906.

So it's one of the last poems that he wrote,

and we were introduced to it

because it used to be on a plaque outside of his home in Dayton, Ohio.

I just love Dunbar's eyes in this photo.

It's one of my favorite photos of him, as a young man.

The title cards themselves are styled after early silent cinema.

So you see the two heads of my logo for my company,

Wimmin With a Mission.

The heads are book ended on that,

and then we used whatever script that seemed most appropriate.

It took me many years

to find these photographs that introduce us to Chicago.

As an independent--

Alternative independent cinema that we are a part of,

I did not have the funds

to actually redesign streets on contemporary Chicago

to look like 1905 Chicago.

The best way for us to do that was to actually incorporate still photography,

historical photographs.

So many of these photographs

were specifically from the Chicago History Center.

[D�sir] I think also, because we had a limited budget and limited time,

we couldn't look for places

that would convey the time that we were trying to recreate.

[Davis] Right, right, right.

And I played a little fast and dirty with it,

so the photo of the people on the street is actually from Richmond, Virginia.

It's not from Chicago.

But it was very difficult at that time to access photographs.

The Chicago Defender was one of the early papers

that was dedicated to serving the Black community of Chicago

at the time.

It's where I got a lot of my source material

about where the films were started.

We had to actually physically go to the archives.

This wasn't when you can actually look stuff up digitally online.

This is pre-online digital archives.

So a lot of these were from different places

from all over the country.

Unusual places too.

There's no folder that says "African American early life."

There were different places where you had to find things,

like Visiting Nurses' Association

or something that had to do with, like, labor or other subject matter.

And the archivists were really, really good to me.

And the longer I was there,

the more they would bring out materials for me to use.

So I really appreciated them.

Scott Joplin was such a big influence on American music,

and I don't think that he gets the due that he should have.

This sequence introduces Malindy.

And you notice that each character will have a different type of script

and a symbol.

Hers is a sewing needle and thread.

So we do that for each character.

These were from Gallaudet University.

So these were photographs that actually came from Gallaudet

that showed the history of Deaf education in this country.

And this incident did also happen,

that the Kendall School for the Deaf segregated in 1906,

and then Black and, at that time, Indigenous Americans

were segregated out of the school.

So this is them before that happened.

So basically, those title cards are trying to contextualize the film

for our audiences

so that they know this is not just something that was done fictionally.

It's actually based in historical fact and record.

We were influenced by what we knew to build the film.

[D�sir] I really enjoyed shooting in the dunes,

and I took influence

from both Rashomon and La Strada

as great black-and-white cinema.

I looked at them

because we had videotapes at Ithaca College, where I was working.

So... Ah, yes, this was strictly chance.

[Davis] The scene with the ducks and the girls catching the ducks

were found by one of our production assistants,

Christine Minor.

She said, "Z, come on, you gotta come see this!

Come see. Come look at this."

And we rushed over,

and Pierre and Greg, who was our AC, were able to capture that really quickly.

So... independent film making:

Use the resources that are available to you

or the opportunities that open themselves to you.

[D�sir] Now, this is not Chicago, obviously.

This is the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan.

It was a great location.

[Davis] Yeah, it was called Kemil Beach, is where we were filming here.

And this young girl, Tildy Evans,

was the daughter of one of my good also-filmmaker friends, Portia Cobb,

who is also in the film later on.

And that's her daughter Nirvana.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the sound in this scene too.

We-- Of course, because we're shooting at the beach,

we have to do all of the sound for the chalkboard

in an ADR session later on.

But it was really important to make sure

that the emotion that happens between these two characters gets expressed

through the way that the chalk is percussively hit

on the little slate that she has.

So when you see this,

it's actually me in the edit room

going through and writing this text,

but I'm actually trying to, like,

capture the emotion of Malindy in particular here,

when she responds to Tildy that she's not deaf and dumb.

So I hit the slate really hard

to make sure that that percussive emotion reflected the anger and hurt

that Malindy felt.

And then, of course, Tildy realizes what she says and says that she's sorry,

and she's learning sign language and alphanumeric text.

She's learning sign language at the same time.

And again, trains were a really big way

that folks emigrated from the South to the North.

A lot of folks in Chicago were coming up

from places like Alabama and Mississippi, Louisiana.

So by not having dialogue in the beginning of this film...

There is no dialogue until about 20 minutes in.

...we wanted to get you into the world of silent cinema,

so sound effects and sound design were super important,

along with the photographs,

to set you contextually back into this early-1900s time period.

And I also love this photograph, which was...

There was a flood, and people were waiting to be recuperated.

So the idea was to, like, just make sure

that you kind of felt like you were back in that time period

through the use of the photographs and the sound and the live action.

So integrating all of those together

to kind of build this world in the early 1900s

was super important for us.

[Ch�ry] But it is also to kind of build a world

that folks were running all away from.

For example, you see the cotton fields

and hard domestic work in the South.

It's to set...

It's to try to show what people like Malindy

and the other folks are getting away from, from the South.

[D�sir] Especially that zoom-in on that face, you can see the...

The careworn face of that woman.

-Obviously it appealed to you. -[Davis] Yeah.

-[D�sir] Because you zoom in on it. -[Davis] Mm-hm.

[Davis] This was a church in Evanston that actually...

You can tell from our sign

that we kind of co-opted it

to be what we needed it to be.

But the idea was, again,

to show how Malindy was really a part of the community...

and welcoming-- She's a woman who's well-off.

She's not a migrant.

Her family's been established in Chicago for quite some time.

And so she's part of the group of people

who would welcome new migrants into the city

and provide, you know, whatever needs they might have,

being clothing, jobs, food, so on and so forth.

[D�sir] But I also think that's very important,

that you show an African American family

that has been established and is living in an established way,

while American cinema has rarely shown that,

-at least till recently. -[Davis] Yeah.

[D�sir] But most of the time, you just see servants and slaves,

and it's as if that's the only thing that existed back then.

And to show that now...

Especially if you could then talk about somebody like Scott Joplin.

He wrote music.

He was an educated man, which there were a lot of.

-[Davis] Exactly. -[D�sir] And so, you know,

that's a part of what you're trying to convey.

[Davis] Mm-hm.

This is one of my favorite shots in the film,

when Arthur's coming up at the Kemil Beach in Indiana Dunes.

[D�sir] And I'm getting wet.

[Davis laughs] Yeah, you were definitely getting wet.

And there are those smokestacks in the background,

which did exist back in the late 1800s.

So they're actually correct.

And you notice that Arthur has a mandolin for his symbol.

Malindy had the spool and thread, and Arthur has a mandolin.

So he brings music and he brings new perspective to Malindy.

He's found a penny on the shore,

and then he looks up and sees Malindy.

Hopefully, what Reginald's music does at this point

is also kind of open you up to these new experiences

and this new chapter

that each of these characters is gonna have

as part of their experiences of meeting each other here.

And of course, this part of the film is very much influenced

by Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust.

We have the women in white and the umbrellas on the beach,

as they did in Daughters of the Dust

and as you will see in more contemporary works

with Beyonc�'s Lemonade album.

Same references that are being made there.

We thought a lot and did a lot of research,

Marc especially,

on making sure that things got incorporated

from literature into this film.

So you see Malindy reading a book.

We have the title cards that talk about Du Bois' contributions

and also the Chicago Defender.

So we're trying to establish that African Americans were reading.

[chuckles] They were writing. They were reading.

They were very productive members of American society

back from the beginning of our introduction to this country.

So those things were important for us to reflect in the film.

The film is a silent film very much as a response

to the racist film, D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation.

So when we're in film school, we get bludgeoned with watching that film.

And professors will often talk

about that film's, you know, great technological achievements,

but they don't talk about the racism

and the ideas of white supremacy that are inculcated by that film.

So we very much are trying to go against that.

You just saw that Malindy is writing a letter to one of the women

who's a fearless campaigner against racism and lynching in America,

Ida B. Wells-Barnett,

and she was a very brave and very active journalist

in the early 1900s.

So it was important to make sure that people who were historical

were also referenced in this film even though it's fiction.

We still borrow very much from historical memory

and, you know, actual events.

And if you notice, through the film,

the text "Malindy" is written in cursive.

Go ahead, Marc.

[Ch�ry] I was gonna say that the other thing to mention too

is that Dunbar and the Malindy character

and the rise of the Chicago Defender,

they're part of this generation,

of what was the second generation, you could say,

after the Civil War.

So they're coming into their own.

Black Americans are building culture,

specifically a literary culture,

with lots of newspapers being born.

And you have the sense that...

I would say African Americans have the sense that...

In this period, which is pre-NAACP,

you have a lot of writers, you have a lot of newspapers.

It's the growth of newspapers from Chicago to Pittsburgh.

It's just phenomenal, and it was important to reflect that.

For example, Dunbar is the first writer

of African descent in the U.S.

who actually is making a living as a writer.

Before him, that does not exist.

And he's actually very popular in a popular-culture sort of way.

And he's giving voices to the frustrations,

aspirations of African Americans,

which you see reflected in that period and in the film.

[Davis] So this scene is actually shot in the studios at Northwestern University.

We used period wallpaper to establish the scene.

And over here on the wall,

you see pictures of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells,

Paul Laurence Dunbar's in the cameo, in the circle,

and then Lucy Parsons,

who's one of the early women who influenced the Haymarket riot

and also is part of the reasons

why we have Labor Day or unions and workers' rights today.

So it was important to have these be people that were in Malindy's place

so that those photographs on the wall

are kind of like an homage or an altar, whatever,

that also celebrates that culture in that particular time period as well.

[Ch�ry] The picture of Lucy Parsons

represents sort of an internationalist perspective,

connection with working-class struggles

not only in the U.S. but also in Europe.

The Haymarket people and what they rep,

and the slave labor struggles that they represented,

was one of the few integrated struggles in the U.S,,

even around 1875.

So to show Malindy being aware of that

definitely places her in a sort of class consciousness that she has

that most people in the old settler Black community of Chicago

would have disapproved of.

[Davis] So this is the introduction to the present-day,

at that time 1990s, Chicago.

The percussive music, done by Atiba Jali and my good friend Asma Feyijinmi,

were done with an udu.

So it's a water-sounding percussive instrument.

So that was very important to me,

to also kind of reflect on how Deaf people have experiences of sound.

It might not be the way hearing people have it,

but they do have some sensation of sound.

And in talking to Michelle when we were doing research,

that led us to include certain types of audio elements

that would reflect her experiences of sound.

This, again, is shot at the Indiana Dunes.

Again, each character has their own symbol.

"Malaika" is "angel" in Swahili.

I spent time in Kenya, so that's reflected in her name.

And then Nico here

also has a v�v� of Ogun

from Haitian religious practices known as Vodou.

So that was important for us to represent here in the film.

And we wanted the film to have some...

You know, it's a serious film, but there's still humor in what happens,

and this is one of those times when it does, is...

The thought bubbles that are in the title cards

kind of reflect the goofiness that Nico has

when he's trying to get Malaika's attention.

[D�sir] Also, I noticed several times when we were shooting on the dunes,

I got lucky with an overcast sky.

That shot of modern Chicago, there was an overcast as well.

Because a lot of it, I'm fighting with very dark skin, very bright sky.

But if it's overcast, it helped me. It's like a big scrim.

But in this scene, we've got sun.

And... [chuckles] I was hoping-- And it came out pretty good.

At least, I think it did.

[Davis] I would agree. [chuckles]

[D�sir] But you can see the way the sky is washed out here,

while, if you look at the earlier shots

when we had the... Malindy and Tildy, was it?

-[Davis] Mm-hm. Yes. -[D�sir] Yeah.

-That had a nice scrim over the sky. -[Davis] Mm-hm.

[D�sir] I was really working with two different concepts.

There's the concept of the silent film, the early films,

and then this more modern one,

and trying to at least make a difference in the image between the two,

but not too much,

because we think of silent film as very basic, very simple,

and in actuality, no,

they developed a visual language that was quite complex.

And I tried to portray that in the earlier shots

so that it's not as different.

But this... This location was amazing,

as far as what it gave me, as far as background,

and I'm thinking of the whole frame and then the characters in it.

Again, this very white sand, these very dark complexions.

But I believe we were shooting with 7231, which is a Kodak Plus-X film,

and it has great latitude.

And it's really replicating those images.

And I'm quite happy when I saw the rushes.

[Davis] And we also shot on an Arri SR camera?

[D�sir] Yeah, an Arriflex SR.

It was always a zoom lens. We didn't have any prime lenses.

[Davis] No-- Okay, you got that wrong, bro. Sorry.

[D�sir] Oh, yeah? We did?

[Davis] Yeah, we had prime lenses. I'm looking...

- I got the script supervisor's sheets. -[D�sir] Okay.

[Davis] We were basically shooting with, like, 10-12 mm lenses all the time.

So, no, we did not have a zoom lens.

-[D�sir] Okay. -[Davis] Yeah.

We wouldn't have had a zoom lens,

because we were trying to replicate silent cinema.

-[D�sir] Right. -[Davis] So we stuck to primes.

And I rented those primes. [laughs]

[D�sir] We did zoom in a couple of times.

-I'm looking for that. -[Davis] Yeah. Okay.

[D�sir] But, yeah, I believe you.

You're talking to a 76-year-old

trying to remember what he did 30-odd years ago.

[Davis laughs] No shade. No shade.

I wouldn't have remembered if I didn't have the script-supervisor notes.

-[D�sir] Yeah, mm-hm. -[Davis] So that's okay. [laughs]

So this is a photograph of a nickelodeon theater,

which was started in Pittsburgh, but, okay, we put it in Chicago anyway.

But that's true, it was a nickel to buy a movie-theater ticket,

so that's why we have it incorporated here

as an ode to historical beginnings of cinema.

This is actually in a screening room at Northwestern University

which we converted to be a movie theater.

Mott Enterprises, Pekin Stock Company Players,

and Foster Photoplay were actual entities that produced films.

I love this scene,

again because this was an incorporation of our friends

Lisa Brock and Otis Cunningham.

And that's-- The guy in the white with the porter hat

is actually our composer, Reginald R. Robinson.

So part of our ethos as L.A. Rebellion filmmakers

is that we use people from our community

to represent who they are in real life.

And these were great activists in Chicago and friends of ours,

and we used their backyard to film this scene.

So it's nice to put ordinary people,

who are basically playing themselves to some degree, in there.

And if you look hard, you can see Marc in the audience in the background too.

Marc has a lot of credits as an extra.

-In many of our films. [laughs] -[Ch�ry laughs]

[Davis] Yeah, he's over in the right corner right there.

[Ch�ry] The other thing to mention briefly, as Zeinabu mentions,

throughout the country at this time,

you have a lot of Black entrepreneurs joining this cinema movement.

And Foster... I forgot his first name, but Foster--

-[Davis] William Foster. -[Ch�ry] William Foster in Chicago.

His company was one of the early folk in that field.

They made a film, actually, called...

-[Davis] The Railroad Porter. -[Ch�ry] ... The Railroad Porter,

which has been lost, or at least hasn't been found.

Essentially, Zeinabu,

we created our own silent movie within a movie

to show that part of the history of cinema.

[Davis] Right, and again, The Railroad Porter,

the synopsis was actually in the Chicago Defender,

so that's where we borrowed from, how to create that scene.

I just changed the ending.

Of course, it's a Zeinabu Davis film, so the woman has a gun.

Same way that good guys have a gun, so... [laughs]

But that's-- It was out of research that that became a part of the film.

And again, this scene is just kind of illustrating the growing respect

and admiration of each of these characters for each other.

Again, we're using the text, the style of the text,

to say something about the time period.

So education is very important.

And this is historical photographs from...

Shoot, I think these are from Tuskegee, actually,

that were incorporated into the film.

This actually was from Chicago.

This was one of the photos that I did find.

This was preparation for a World's Fair--

Or World's Fair exhibition that was done in Chicago.

So these were from that particular time period.

[D�sir] Ah.

-There we go. -[Davis] Mm-hm.

Early photographers that were established.

You know, these are not--

These are professionals.

So education, employment, and enlightenment.

This was done at the very beloved

and famous Salsedo Press in Chicago, which was--

This is Chris Burke, who ran Salsedo Press for many years.

And they were very gracious in letting us film here.

And we had Malaika as a graphic artist,

so it was important for us to make sure that we placed her

in a Chicago institution in contemporary times.

Salsedo Press was a press that was worker-owned

and it was also minority-owned

and provided a lot of support

to different progressive organizations in Chicago.

So it was important for us to film here as well.

You wanna say something about this scene, the Chicago Public Library?

[Ch�ry] Again, using--

Independent film, using the resources that you have.

I am a public librarian by profession,

and because of that, this helps not only with research

but also in terms of locations.

The older man you see

in the film was actually my supervisor I had appear in here.

We just explained what independent film was,

and he allowed us to shoot in the library.

He interceded with the administration of the library

to allow us to shoot in there.

So it's a very...

At least for me, it's a very personal scene,

and the fact that Nico is a Black librarian

but also a Black children's librarian.

Which is not necessarily rare

but which is thought to be very, very rare, and it's not.

So it was a great thing to do.

[Davis] And the voice here is my brother, Kevin Davis, [chuckles]

As a local DJ.

And Kevin makes an appearance in the film later on.

But "Wee-funk" is something that he says in another of my films...

our films actually, A Powerful Thang.

[Ch�ry] And going back to the earlier scene

and talking about the literariness of the script and of the movie,

and it's only now that I'm seeing the connections

between Nico being a librarian... [chuckles]

...and the callback to the literary nature

of the screenplay and of the movie.

[Davis] So in this scene, Malaika is performing tai chi

as a means of wellness, of self-care, meditation.

And it was influenced to me by one of my best friends, who's also...

Another silent partner or collaborator in this film process

is Doris Owanda Johnson.

She does tai chi,

and she also does the music for a scene

that will occur a little bit later in the film.

And you notice that Nico is wearing an ASL alphabet shirt,

so he's really trying to get... [laughs]

...In good with Malaika.

He's bought into learning about Deaf culture and community

in big ways here.

So we just saw him in the class

where he was learning sign language as well.

I just wanna say, these actors,

Michelle Angela Banks and John Earl Jelks,

they're incredible.

Because it was alternative independent film making,

we rarely did more than two or three takes on any of these scenes.

And most of the times when we did two or three takes,

it was because the camera--

The magazine either failed

or there was an issue with something that was going on.

It wasn't because of performance.

This, again, is to contextualize the historical period.

This is real.

Black Patti was one of the first Black opera singers.

And she did perform quite a bit in Chicago,

so I wanted to also portray that as well.

Then you notice that the characters' costumes,

these were all period costumes

that we were, again, able to borrow from the Goodman Theatre.

I also wanna point out that we have a quilt,

and the connections between African Americans

and quilting is important.

Quilts were a way that enslaved people were able to somehow

get the quote-unquote "road map� to escape to freedom sometimes,

based on the symbolism that was put in the various quilts.

And you also see a dress in the corner.

Malindy is a dressmaker.

So you see these elements of what her whole person was

embodied in the film as well.

[Ch�ry] I think this section establishes the fact

that Arthur has immersed himself in Deaf culture.

There is a sense that this character, who did not know how to read,

learns how to read from someone else

who doesn't verbalize, or who speaks differently from him.

And it's not a callback, a call-forward,

to what we will see in the film later.

For example, that there's a distinct Deaf culture,

there's a distinct Black Deaf culture,

that is being displayed here.

And just so surprising

the fact that Malindy understands herself as a whole being

and not as a plaything on display for hearing people to gawk at.

I think that's...

It's essentially the call-forward

as well as the self-affirmation

of Malindy and Arthur's acceptance of her the way that she is.

Which is why he's so hurt that she's hurt

at this swanky affair that they went to.

[Davis] Both John Earl Jelks, the lead actor, and myself

took sign language classes before we shot the film.

I have, unfortunately, not kept up with it as much as I wish I could.

I think I would if I was in communication with more Deaf folks,

but we did learn as much as we could

so that we could use it on set to communicate with Michelle

when we didn't have interpreters.

And Michelle was so good, so kind and generous.

And, you know, if we had to, we went to pad and paper,

because this was before cell phones.

And here we have some of the photographs of labor

back in the early part of the 20th century.

So again, trying to establish Chicago

as a place where these workers kind of combine their efforts

to build the city, to build this community.

So we go from the past, and then we tilt up,

and then we come down to the present.

This is actually the first scenes that we shot in the film,

in July of 1993.

This was part of the Chicago-- Taste of Chicago weekend

that happens every year just before the 4th of July.

And sadly, this building doesn't exist anymore,

the Ebony/Jet building, in the skyline of Chicago.

But at that time, Ebony/Jet was a very important publication

for the Black community

that gave people all over the country and the world

an idea of what was happening in Black culture.

So this was before social media, so on and so forth.

This was shot guerrilla-style.

Pierre, you wanna talk about how we shot this--?

-[D�sir] Did we shoot this on a Bolex? -[Davis] We shot this on a Bolex.

[D�sir] Look, I remember something, Jeez Louise, 'cause I was wondering.

I'm saying-- We're in this big crowd and people are leaving us alone,

and I'm saying, "I've got an Arri SR in this? No, no."

And no, it was a-- Now I remember, yeah, it was a Bolex.

[Davis] Mm-hm.

-[D�sir] My favorite camera. -[Davis] Yep.

Maya Deren.

[Davis & D�sir laugh]

[Davis] Yeah. And this, again, was a guerrilla shot as well.

This one, I think, is back on the Arri.

[D�sir] Well, everything was guerrilla shot.

I mean, we didn't have permission for anything.

[Davis] We had permission for some things.

-[D�sir] Okay. -[Ch�ry] The library, we had permission.

[D�sir] Yeah, okay.

-But on the street? -[Davis] On the street, no.

[D�sir] No.

-And the subways... [laughs] ...coming up? -[Davis] No. The I station, yeah.

This is a beautiful mural at Legler Branch Library,

where Marc used to work and where we have Nico.

You think you could tell the story of the brother librarian real quickly?

[Ch�ry] Oh, there's a story in the library world

of this Black children's librarian.

I forgot which city, but he was doing exactly--

Something similar to what Nico Jones is doing.

And a white parent, a mother,

didn't know, or didn't see him as the real person,

didn't see him as a librarian, and...

I forgot the whole story, but she either called the police

or called...

Or called the head librarian to come and kick him out,

not knowing that he was the children's librarian.

That person wrote something in our literature

and how his heart was broken.

And Zeinabu, having heard that, wanted to honor that story.

[Davis] Okay, so this scene introduces Malaika's best friend, Bill Young,

as played by dancer and performer Christopher Smith.

And I like that we were able to kind of reflect something of Deaf culture

so that when the lights go up, when they flicker like that,

that's how Deaf folks know that someone's at the door.

And so we wanted to make sure that that got reflected also in the film itself.

So we have those little lighting effects that occurred at the same time.

And also with this scene, music is really important,

and the sound of the music is really important.

It's very heavy bass, because you can feel bass.

And we made this audio a little bit too loud,

just because Michelle and Christopher would tell me

that they respond to the vibration in sound,

and that's how they would know how to do some of the dance moves

or whatever kind of movement that they were doing.

And you got the librarian with his "Read and Succeed" T-shirt on.

One of Marc's T-shirts, I think. [chuckles]

And then you notice that Bill has on the AIDS insignia

on his T-shirt, for AIDS, to support efforts

towards fighting HIV/AIDS.

I just love the joy in that scene.

They had such good chemistry together, Michelle and John.

And this scene is at the Warehouse in Chicago.

It was a club that we did get permission to use. [chuckles]

And so this is a scene that's supposed to be

at the Black Deaf Advocates meeting, or, you know, social occasion.

So you see the little signs in there.

And the guy who just had the interaction with Nico is Devon Whitmore,

who was one of our-- Or who--

He was our still photographer on the set.

He was from Chicago.

And he is a member of the Black Deaf community in Chicago.

And then, again, we use our little symbols here.

I use symbols from both African

and Indigenous peoples

to symbolize some of my heritage.

And this one is another reuse of the same space,

just in a different location.

And this is Jen,

who was a performer here in Chicago.

That's my dad over there on the left corner, his big head.

So he got in this film too.

And Bill dances to an interpretation of "Compensation,�

the poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, here.

It was beautiful to work with Chris

to figure out how he could interpret this poem through movement.

You wanna say anything about this scene, shooting this scene?

[D�sir] I was worried about that light in the corner. [laughs]

-[Davis] Yeah, but I think it worked well. -[D�sir] It worked, yeah.

-It worked quite well. -[Davis] Yeah.

It's like his body is ethereal.

This is my brother and his wife, Lee Ann,

who came to be a part of the filming process.

[D�sir] She used everybody she could.

[Davis] Yes, equal-opportunity film making.

Include the community and the professional community.

[D�sir] Yeah, I like the way this tilt down eliminates that light

as she's talking about the boon of death.

[Davis] Mm-hm.

And the fact that we let Chris's ear, his hearing aid--

We left the high-pitched volume of the hearing aid.

And I also love that Tyrone and his girlfriend,

note they start to learn sign language applause,

so they raise their hands to mimic.

And then we were very fortunate the Northwestern Library

let us take out issues of Crisis magazine

from the early 1900s so we could have Malindy reading it.

And again, my little symbols in here.

I think these ones were for...

prosperity in life.

This is Sissieretta Jones again,

who showed earlier in the photographs.

And here she is again.

I love her look and how elegant she is.

And again, the importance of quilt to African American community.

They're quilting by the side of Lake Michigan.

This is up in the Evanston area near-- On the campus of Northwestern.

And this is Edith, who is a folklorist and folktale performer from Chicago.

And she also knew American Sign Language,

so it was perfect for her and Michelle to interact with each other in this scene.

And again, we pay attention to class background here,

because clearly Malindy's mother does not want her to associate with Arthur

because he's, you know, quote-unquote "lower class."

He's a working-class person,

and she wants her daughter to be engaged

with only people who are from a quote-unquote "better class."

[Ch�ry] Probably should say here that...

in the earlier title card, it mentioned "old settler."

"Old settler" is a term used

to refer to both the pre- and post-Civil War community,

Black community, in Chicago,

but before the beginning of the Great Migration--

Certainly before-- Even before the beginning

of a lesser, minor migration which began around the 1900s.

And of course, as in any community,

there are differences of class and background and tensions.

You can see a little bit of the tension between Malindy and her mom there.

Way less conservative than her mother.

[Davis] And again, images of people doing everyday things was important to me,

that you saw that new part of Chicago River does have these openings.

Here we're back at the Indiana Dunes.

It was supposed to be in Chicago,

but we actually physically shot the scene at the Indiana Dunes.

[chuckles] And I remember getting in big trouble with the Goodman people

"cause we got their costumes wet.

[D�sir] Yeah.

[Davis laughing] This was the actors improvising.

[D�sir] I think my jaw hit the floor watching this.

[Davis] Yeah. [laughs]

-[D�sir] This part. -[Davis] Exactly.

-[D�sir groans, then laughs] -[Davis] Oh, man. [laughs]

They had fun, but we paid for it later, that's for sure. [laughs]

[D�sir] "Cause these were period costumes.

[Davis] Yeah, exactly.

Okay, I know Pierre wants to talk about this scene.

[D�sir] This scene comes out of...

The building she came out of,

we were gonna shoot an interior in there.

It's an old building, and we're trying to light it...

And I forget who the gaffer was.

It was this young woman.

And she was heroically running cable up and down the floors,

trying to find some way to distribute the...

To draw on the power so that we didn't blow all the fuses

that we were running out of.

And while she was doing that, I took a break outside in the back.

And I'm sitting there and watching, and I called Zeinabu,

and I said, "Zeinabu, come here," and I pointed to the table out there

and said, "Why can't we do it out here?"

And it was like a light went off in her head, and she said, "Oh!"

And she went inside and stopped everything.

And it sure was a lot easier. [chuckles]

[Davis] Exactly.

And again, this was one of our contacts from the community,

Ms. Roberts, who, you know, really helped us develop

and get to know other members of the Chicago Black Deaf community.

So we cast her as Malaika's mom.

[D�sir] I thought the actress on the left did a very good job as well.

[Davis] Yes, she did.

-Karen Stephens, yes. -[D�sir] Mm-hm.

[Ch�ry] And she could sign.

[Davis] Exactly. We wanted to make sure people knew how to sign.

[D�sir] And this is Zeinabu's brother, having a good time being on film.

[Davis laughs]

[D�sir] He enjoyed himself.

Did a damn good job.

[Davis] This is the only time I ever saw John stumble in a scene,

because my brother--

He thought he was gonna have to, like, encourage my brother

to figure out what he was supposed to do as part of his performance.

And my brother came on the scene and just, like, slammed-- [laughs]

Went through the whole scene real quickly,

so we actually had to take multiple takes because John was forgetting his lines,

not because my brother was forgetting his lines.

But it was funny to look back at the script supervisor's notes

and see that she got frustrated because, of course--

Because my brother isn't really an actor. He's basically playing himself.

He never did anything exactly the same way twice.

So it drove the script supervisor crazy,

but it made for a scene that still gets laughs,

you know, some 30 years later.

And my brother's wearing our production-company shirt,

Wimmin With a Mission T-shirts that we made back in the day.

And again, another reference to literature here

from Marc as the screenwriter.

We were paying homage

to Paul Laurence Dunbar, and the young woman reading the poem

is the same young woman who plays Tildy in the period section.

And that's her mother sitting in the middle there.

That's Portia Cobb,

and then that's her daughter Nirvana Cobb who's performing.

I mentioned that Portia Cobb is also a filmmaker,

and she's based in Milwaukee.

[Davis] The interpreter, Bonnie Koss,

was also a wonderful resource for folks, getting us interpreters.

We needed to have interpreters on the set with us,

and Bonnie was real helpful in making sure that we got folks there.

This is the same set as the period set.

We just changed some of the artwork so that it made it more contemporary.

We still have the same futon. That's our futon.

[commentators laughing]

Thirty years later.

[D�sir] John was having a good time.

[Davis] So one of the things that happened in the '90s in Chicago

that did not get reported enough was the prevalence of HIV and AIDS

in the Black community,

and especially how it affected African American women,

and young African American women.

So it was important for us to incorporate Malaika

as being someone who was living with being HIV-positive.

That she still had a life, she wasn't about to die,

but that she did have to carry this burden of what was going on with her body.

And so we incorporated that into the film

to hopefully bring a little bit more light

and to have people discuss HIV and AIDS in the community.

Because the film was, in part, inspired by a dancer's response

to the loss of folks in her community.

One of the ways that I, as a director, work with people from my community

is to incorporate them into my films.

And so, Asma Feyijinmi was Yasmine Allen in A Powerful Thang.

And to keep her in character while she was on the set,

I did have her write biographical notes in a journal as her character.

And Asma, as a dancer in real life in Brooklyn, New York,

had experienced a lot of loss of some of her community

because of HIV and AIDS.

So that reflected in her response to the poem

"Compensation� by Paul Laurence Dunbar,

and that's what planted the seed for Marc to write Compensation a bit later on.

John Earl Jelks is my muse.

We write films for him, productions, to use him whenever we can.

We started knowing each other

pretty much right from the time that we started at UCLA.

He came with a friend to audition for a film,

and he was supporting the friend,

but then our friend Iverson White asked him to read.

And the next thing we know, John is in a student short

that won lots of awards called Dark Exodus.

And then John and I just kept working together.

He's in my first student film, a student narrative film,

which is called Crocodile Conspiracy.

And so I always try to use him as one of my actors as much as possible.

Michelle Angela Banks was someone we found

after Marc had written the screenplay.

Marc and I traveled to St. Paul, Minnesota,

for a grant panel for Independent Television Service.

And in the evenings,

we were basically trying to find different things to do.

And in the free paper in St. Paul-Minneapolis,

we found an ad for the Northern Sign Theatre,

and it had a photograph of Michelle doing sign language

for a production of Waiting for Godot.

So we went to that production,

and Marc and I were just blown away by her performance.

And we did the thing that alternative independent filmmakers do:

We stalked her... [laughs] ...backstage

and asked her if she would be interested in being in the film.

So Marc and I rewrote--

Well, Marc wrote. --the screenplay

and incorporated as much information as we could about Deaf community

so that we reflect Deaf experiences.

I took ASL classes.

We started working with members of the Black Deaf Advocates Group in Chicago

and incorporated as much as possible

about Black Deaf life and culture that we could into the film.

Packingtown was a real place in Chicago.

Chicago was known for its meatpacking industry,

so that's reflected in the series of photographs that you see in here.

And also, this would be very much influenced

by the great director Charles Burnett's film Killer of Sheep as well.

So you hear the sound of the sheep in the sheep house.

There's another homage moment that happens.

Here's Marc again in another one of his...

-[D�sir] Cameos. -[Davis] ...cameos. [laughs]

Smoking a cigarette, no less.

-[D�sir] Indeed. -[Davis laughs]

-[D�sir] Shame on you. -[Davis] Right?

I loved working with Maestro-Matic to kind of get the horror

of the tuberculosis and the conditions, the working conditions,

that Arthur had to work through

even though he's sick with tuberculosis.

So it was reflecting on what that experience must have been like.

This was actually shot in our garage in Chicago,

but we have that low angle up on Arthur

to kind of single out how dire his situation is

in terms of contracting tuberculosis.

[D�sir] It was a very limiting location.

We could only get that one shot.

We couldn't move anywhere because it was just a garage.

It was supposed to be a packinghouse.

But I think it got it across.

[Davis] So here we have Malindy expressing her frustration

at not being understood by someone in the hearing world.

And we also reflect that

with Malaika and Nico's relationship at the same time.

And it's important to understand

that Deaf communities have their own culture,

their own language, and their own ways of connecting with each other.

I personally think, as a hearing person, it's up to us to be more open

in wanting to learn how to communicate with Deaf folks.

It shouldn't be the other way around, that Deaf people have to accommodate us.

It's more like we need to do things

so that we can be a part of their world as well.

So it's been really important to me

to be able to have interactions with the Deaf community.

Hopefully, we've made some friends over the years

and also that we've also encouraged other Deaf filmmakers

to be a part of this alternative independent film making

that we're trying to build.

In this scene, Karen Stephens, who's playing the sister to Malaika,

she was very good at--

She did come from a family where...

She has a Deaf sibling, I believe.

And so she is kind of portraying things that she's gone through.

And I think that's important, not to kind of, like, gloss over that,

is to actually show some of those tensions and what is happening

so that people understand that we're human beings

and we're still grappling with these issues and tensions in our own way.

Sometimes for good and sometimes not necessarily for good.

So I hope that kind of got across

in these interactions with the characters specifically.

[Ch�ry] Also in this scene--

Not necessarily in the scene

but in the actor's, in Karen's, personal life,

she is totally fluent.

And Zeinabu mentioned that she has a Deaf sibling.

It looks like, and it is true, that in the actor's family,

once they had a Deaf child, it looks like everyone learned ASL.

It is-- From what we learned in the community,

it is not always the case

that hearing members of the family learn ASL.

Unfortunately, it tends to be the other way around.

There are some awful stories of Deaf children

being forced to vocalize

or being sent to hearing schools

and their special circumstances not being acknowledged.

So in that sense,

Karen, the actor, brought a lot of personal experience,

which made her performance better and deeper.

[Davis] This letter just absolutely killed me the first time I read it.

And this is a tribute to Marc's writing and how powerful it is.

It's so-- It's such a simple letter that's--

In the way that it's written and constructed,

but it just, like, has so much impact and meaning.

And I actually love to watch audiences, because I've seen the film too many times,

but I always like to watch the audience when they read the letter along with Nico,

and how it kind of, you know, it's a gut punch,

just like it is to the character Nico.

And John really just did an outstanding job as Nico in this scene.

He just...

Those are real tears, and he just... You know, he just let them flow.

He was comfortable to show a kind of vulnerability

that he had as that character.

[D�sir] I was a little dissatisfied with that

because I wanted a shot from behind him,

to hold on the back of his head

just to let the audience think about what was going on.

But hey, I'm just a cinematographer.

[Davis] This scene was shot in the stairwell of our audience.

Mr. Ike is my neighbor, or was my neighbor, on the first floor

in the three-flat in Chicago.

So it was fun to shoot here.

And this is the beginning of the...

what we call "the depression montage,�

where the contemporary characters don't know what they're going to be doing

in terms of how they're going to make their relationship continue, so...

We're going back and forth between what's happening

between each of the characters.

Again, shooting at Legler Branch Library,

and then the stuff on the train, on the underbelly of the train,

which, Pierre didn't shoot this part.

You shot the static shots, but the parts that we're going to see

where the train is under was actually shot by Rik Delisle.

These parts, Rik Delisle's laying on top of a station wagon,

shooting up, and that's how we actually got those shots underneath the I tracks

on the North Side, I think along...

[D�sir] But I shot these shots.

[Davis] Yes, you did.

[D�sir] I shot these shots on the station and in the train,

-and it was quite an adventure... -[Davis] Mm-hm.

...getting these, because, again, this was guerrilla, so no permission.

[Davis] Mm-hm.

And we had to coordinate when John and Kevin would be Tyrone and Nico

and then when Malaika and Chris were going to be on the car.

So John and Nico are on the-- I'm sorry. Nico and Tyrone are on the platform,

but then Malaika and Bill are actually on the train.

So we had to do it a couple times to make sure we could get that coordinated

so we could see...

[D�sir] What you'll notice is that as the train pulls into the station

-and we're on Malaika and Bill... -[Davis] Mm-hm.

...In the back-- Through the window, we see Nico and Tyrone.

[Davis] Mm-hm.

Yeah.

Each film, I try to set up a new thing that I haven't done before.

And I had not-- Up to that point, I'd never done optical printing.

So I was fortunate to be able to use the facilities

at the School of the Art Institute

to learn how to do optical printing for this.

I also taught part-time at School of the Art Institute as well.

So it was a good way to kind of learn that.

Here we just wanted to show this is how Malaika and Michelle, in real life,

watch TV, with the open captions.

So it was important to show

this is how Deaf are going to consume or take part in different forms of media.

So we took short clips from the weather

and again, took a clip from a film that I made.

This is from Mother of the River.

That's my short film that we made the year after we did Compensation.

So I don't have to pay for rights for my own film,

so that's why it got in here.

And then this is in our apartment.

And Nico's scenes are in an apartment

which was our apartment in Chicago when Marc and I lived in Chicago.

And Malaika's is on the set, which was at Northwestern University.

And this particular sequence also has like...

I believe when we put it all together, it's probably about 32 tracks of audio.

Spent a lot of time, like, building the sequence here.

And again, we wanted to kind of reflect Deaf perceptions of sound as well as,

like, what these characters were going through,

to not kind of know where they were going to take this particular relationship.

But we had, like, coins,

we did microphones with condoms underneath water to get water sounds,

and we did a lot of clinking on the sides of instruments

to get some of the percussive, like, more high-pitched percussive sounds

to match the mood and the feelings that the characters were going through

at this time.

You notice here, John starts--

Or Nico starts wearing more traditional clothing,

and that's to reflect, in terms of his spirituality,

he's going back to his roots, so to speak.

And who did this sculpture, Pierre?

[D�sir] Yeah, I made that sculpture.

[Davis & D�sir laughing]

-[D�sir] I thought that looked familiar. -[Davis] Yeah.

[D�sir] I didn't get paid. [laughing]

[Davis] No one did, bro.

[Davis & D�sir laughing]

[Davis] Well, the actors did get paid. We did pay the actors something.

[D�sir] Mm.

[Davis] This is kind of a signature Pierre D�sir scene.

It's in Cycles, it's in Compensation.

We have these beautiful panning shots of altar items.

And an altar is basically a sacred space that you have in your home

that can be for a celebration of your ancestors

or your spirit guides or whoever you want to commemorate

and help guide you through your life.

And this is my mom, Dorothy Davis,

and my grandmothers, Geneva and Annie,

and that's my baby brother when he was a baby, Kevin.

And...

we got some Cuban rum... [laughs] ...on the altar as well.

And then again, Pierre's statues in...

-[D�sir] This is a different statue. -[Davis] Yeah.

[D�sir] This is...

-[Davis] You did two. -[D�sir] ...one of the male gods.

-[Davis] Yes. Mm-hm. -[D�sir] This is Ogun.

[Ch�ry] Which Pierre made specifically for the film, right, Pierre?

[D�sir] Yeah.

[commentators laughing]

[Davis] And I also want to point out, we mentioned another person

who's important to us as a collaborator,

and that's Doris Owanda Johnson, and this is her singing a mojuba,

which is a prayer from Yoruba

that also is recounting the ancestors

and our debt that we owe to the ancestors you see.

Nico is dressed in white,

and it's specifically so that he can recall

and reflect on whatever lessons he needs to undertake

to go forward in his relationship with Malaika.

Well, he doesn't know if he's going to go forward yet,

but through these meditations and incantations,

something happens for him.

And it was important to also kind of end on those hands on the statue

because it's a static angle or uplift.

So it was important.

I absolutely love this photograph.

This photograph was these two formerly enslaved women.

It was about 1903.

And I found that at the Library of Congress.

I actually-- I just love the expression that those ladies have on their faces,

and this one too.

Sadly, this stretch of beach no longer exists in Chicago.

It kind of got washed away due to climate change.

But this was the Howard Street Beach in the North Side of Chicago.

And again, it's another altar.

This was the altar that was done on the beach.

[D�sir] But this is back at the dunes.

[Davis] This part is back at the dunes, yes.

-[D�sir] Mm-hm. -[Davis] Mm-hm.

So again, this part of the film takes a much more spiritual aspect

that's like, does this really happen or not?

I don't know.

It's up to you, however you interpret it.

But this is Malaika and Nico.

Maybe in the future.

But it's very whimsical, and hopefully encourages you

to understand the resilience of these characters.

There's Nico on the other side facing the stacks, smokestacks.

And again, these are photographs of...

Some of these were photographs that were from the exhibition.

This is Ida Wells-Barnett, activist and journalist.

This is a formerly enslaved couple

and the life they built.

So we give you some clues,

but it's up to you to interpret it however you want.

This is the final scene for the contemporary couple.

So the fact that we have this older couple right before this couple... [chuckles]

...this shot of this couple, I'm hoping that gives you an idea

that something happens with them that's more on a positive note.

And we specifically commissioned this... [laughs]

-...this flock of... [laughs] -[D�sir] Gaggle of geese? Yeah, uh-huh.

...of geese to fly across right at the perfect time

for Pierre to get the shot.

[D�sir] Yeah, no, they were truly difficult.

We had to do it several times.

-Go back and start again, you know. -[Davis] Right?

[Davis & D�sir laugh]

[Davis] Yeah.

And then the end of the film follows through

with the end of the story of Malindy and Arthur.

By the way, if you didn't figure it out,

Arthur is Marc's middle name,

so that's why the character has that name.

This is our beloved friend from the L.A. Rebellion Filmmakers.

This is Ilverson White and John interacting with each other.

Iverson is from Detroit.

He was an actor before he was a filmmaker,

and he's the person who cast John in his first film.

So it was very meaningful for John to be in a scene

where he was with lverson

because Iverson was the person who gave him his first break into film,

through the film called Dark Exodus.

[Davis] And again, this is the same garage where the meatpacking scene was.

We just-- You know, alternative independent film making:

We repurpose and use our resources as best we can.

[D�sir] And now we're back at the dunes, and...

This shot was too much.

-[Davis] Why was it too much? -[D�sir] I don't...

- I really enjoyed making it work. -[Davis] Hmm.

[D�sir] You know, catching him in the corner there.

-[Davis] Mm-hm. -[D�sir] But for zooming out

and tilting up from...

Went against sort of what I was supposed to be doing,

because it's supposed to be part of the silent film,

so the zoom is not possible.

But I did anyway, and...

I think I caught him pretty good.

[Davis] Yeah, it's one of my favorite shots in the scene.

The water looks so ethereal

and, you know, just has this kind of, like, magic quality.

[D�sir] We were lucky with the sky.

There always seemed to be a little bit of a haze.

[Davis] Mm-hm.

[Davis] The music also carries this too.

Reginald's, you know, simple piano notes here really also give a lot of poignancy

to this particular scene.

And so Arthur has left the sanatorium where he is

to come and give Malindy the letter since he's been absent for so long.

[Davis] And we don't interpret this,

but you know that he's saying, "I love you."

[D�sir] I like the roiling background, the waves in the background.

[Davis] Mm-hm.

[D�sir] Yeah, this was too much.

[Davis] Yeah. Shot this with a polarizer also on the lens as well.

[D�sir] Mm.

[Davis] Cut down to increase the contrast.

[D�sir] Mm.

[Davis] And heighten the blacks that are in the scene, the resolution.

[D�sir] I remember watching him, saying, "Please stay in character.

Please stay in character.�

[Davis] I still have the script supervisor's notes.

"Quote: 'It was great. It was beautiful.

In other words, I got high.'

End quote.

Cinematographer Pierre D�sir."

[Davis & D�sir laughing]

-[Davis] I love-- -[D�sir] Like I said,

I could have been watching her,

but I was watching him receding to the background, saying:

"Please stay in character. Please stay in character.

Don't do anything." Because... [laughs]

[Davis] And again, tribute to Marc Ch�ry's beautiful writing

in the letter--

The way he incorporated the poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar

into the letter that Arthur is giving to Malindy.

[Davis] Again, just make a note that, you know,

there wasn't any cure for tuberculosis.

So unfortunately, most people at the turn of the century

would turn to alcohol, whiskey, whatever, moonshine,

to kind of take away the pain

of, you know, the hurt or the pain in their lung areas.

And kind of ironic that we have COVID,

which also is a disease that affects your lungs and your heart...

It can affect your heart. ...in the 21st century.

[D�sir] I really like this big tree.

-[Davis] Mm-hm. -[D�sir] Laying there on the beach.

[Davis] Mm-hm.

Again, the happy accident that that trunk was in the water,

and we saw it as we were doing location scouting.

And the water as a healing source is... You know, Toni Morrison's quote,

"All water has a memory," was kind of important.

And... we have this diffusion with the filter.

So we go from period to contemporary.

We're staying period.

And we have the beach altar here and white carnations,

which is a sign of purity.

Some people, it's a sign of death,

but for us, it was a sign of purity, hope and resilience.

So we end on Ayizan,

who is a Haitian v�v� for the healer and protector.

That was it.

Anything you want to add, Mr. D�sir?

[D�sir] No, I don't think so. It was a great deal of fun.

In approaching it, we were trying to be...

almost Third Cinema in the United States.

We weren't trying to emulate the Hollywood way of making movies.

We were actually working against that.

And we were hoping to develop a cinema

that would be accessible to the masses.

[Davis] We don't make films in a vacuum. We make films for our community.

And I'm always trying to play with pushing the audience further.

So that idea of mixing historical evidence,

documentary film making techniques,

experimental film making techniques, and narrative conventions,

I'm always trying to push

and make people see things in a different way,

or a new way, if possible.

I think we learned that because Pierre and I had experiences

of seeing cinema in Cuba

and going to the Havana Film Festival,

and also just Marc and I going to Burkina Faso

for FESPACO, which is an international celebration

of cinema from Africa and the African diaspora.

Seeing audiences respond to the visual language that is cinema

is, like, really-- There's nothing like that experience.

And so it was important to make sure that the film could be reached

by as many people as possible.

So Marc is a master at making sure that there's not too much dialogue.

There's just enough dialogue to get the idea across--

Spoken dialogue to get the idea across,

because we have that experience of watching cinema

of people from different spoken languages, background,

but still being able to appreciate the beauty of cinema

because you understand cinema as a visual language.

So even if you don't know what the words say,

you know what the intent or the emotion is

behind the performance and the framing, composition,

style, lighting, whatever.

So those were things that we wanted to make sure

that they got expressed in some way.

And my favorite part about screening Compensation

is screening it with an audience

that consists of Deaf and hearing people.

Because we don't have enough experiences

or opportunities to actually come together,

and when that happens in a live audience,

where people get to actually see or interact with Deaf folks,

unfortunately, for better or for worse, a lot of people for the first time,

I think that's making an intervention between communication,

that we can reach and touch all of us in different kinds of ways.

So that is and still is the mission of Compensation

and what I think the film does

as a piece of cinema activism or cinema intervention

in terms of modern society.

I was fortunate, as a faculty person, I was able to get a donation,

significant donation, of film stock from Kodak that we were able to use.

It was used as a teaching tool so students would know

how to work with 16 mm black-and-white.

So we shot 7222, which was the indoor stock,

and then 7231, which was the outdoor stock,

the Plus-X and the Tri-X stocks.

[D�sir] Excellent Kodak product.

Does is it exist anymore?