A Jewel From the World of Black Film Arrives at YBCA

When Ashley Clark joined the Criterion Collection as its curatorial director in 2020, he brought along a wish list of titles he hoped to acquire. One was Zeinabu irene Davis’ first narrative feature, Compensation, a 1999 black-and-white film about two Chicago couples who mirror each other across an expanse of decades.

“It’s such a unique and thoughtful film about a lot of serious issues,” Clark tells KQED. “It could sound academic or forbidding, but it’s made with such a spirit of generosity.” 

Deaf actress Michelle A. Banks and hearing actor John Earl Jelks play Malindy and Arthur in the 1910s (and Malaika and Nico in the 1990s), Black Americans facing racism and emerging pandemics. Davis uses inventive techniques, like silent film–era intertitles and archival images, to tell the two love stories in a way that Clark describes as “alive and beautiful and engaging.”

On July 17, Clark will screen Compensation at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in a co-presentation with the Bay Area Video Coalition. Both Davis and Clark will be present for a conversation following the screening. The event is a rare treat that just a few years ago would have been even more of a rarity.

Compensation screened at festivals 27 years ago, but the film was never picked up by distributors, and therefore never released in theaters. It remained in circulation thanks to Women Make Movies, a nonprofit distributor in New York. That is, until Clark approached Davis about acquiring Compensation.

Now, Davis’ independent feature is finally reaching audiences en masse. Compensation began streaming on the Criterion Channel in 2021, entered the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2024, was digitally restored in 4K, received its first theatrical release in 2025, and is now out in the world as a Blu-ray and DVD.

“One of our metrics of success really is looking at Letterboxd,” Clark explains. “You can see that this film has gone from a small number of logged views to suddenly hundreds and hundreds of reviews on there from young cinephiles who are giving it four-star reviews and five-star reviews and saying, ‘Where was this film all my life?’”

Compensation is just one of 100 films Clark has identified that could elicit a similar response. His book The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films came out earlier this year. The compendium isn’t a collection of “the greatest,” Clark explains, but a series of personal arguments for significance.

“I wanted to present something that was quite subjective and potentially contentious,” says Clark, who has Jamaican heritage, was born and raised in the U.K. and now lives in the United States. “One of the things with the book that I’m trying to gently push back against is a sort of reflexive conflation of Black film with American film.”

Included in the book are Ibrahim Shaddad’s 1964 film Hunting Party (a thesis film by a 19-year-old Sudanese filmmaker in Germany); Flora Gomes’ 1988 Mortu Nega (the first film produced in independent Guinea-Bissau); and Jordan Peele’s 2017 breakout Get Out. Clark’s essays are unpretentious, chatty and very personal, knitting together a chronological network of influences and ideas. 

The book’s films span 30 countries and 111 years. Like Compensation before its restoration and theatrical release, not all 100 are readily available to all audiences. 

YBCA has yet to bring back a full film program, but cinephiles will be pleased to hear of at least one substantive series on the horizon: Clark will return this fall for a weekly program drawn from the pages of The World of Black Film. Subtitled “Revolutions,” the Nov. 14–Dec. 19 series will focus on films from the 1960s to the early 1980s — when decolonization movements and radical politics led to greater numbers of Black filmmakers. (Mortu Negra, recently restored, will screen Dec. 5.)

“I hope that everything in the book one day does become available,” Clark says. “And if my book can play some role in helping that become the case, I’d be absolutely delighted.”

The World of Black Film: ‘Compensation’ + Book Signing takes place Friday, July 17 at 6:30 p.m. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (701 Mission St., San Francisco). A talkback with Criterion Collection Curatorial Director, Ashley Clark and director, Zeinabu irene Davis will take place following the screening.

Bring your own copy of ‘The World of Black Film’ at 6 p.m. to have it signed by Ashley Clark.