Events Calendar

This special program, part of OUT OF THE ARCHIVE: BLACK WOMEN BEHIND THE LENS, will feature two films by Zeinabu irene Davis. Davis's Compensation (1999), her debut feature film, presents two unique African-American love stories between a Deaf woman and a hearing man. Inspired by a poem written by Paul Laurence Dunbar, this moving narrative shares their struggle to overcome racism, disability and discrimination. An important film on African-American Deaf culture, Davis incorporates silent film techniques (such as title cards and vintage photos) to make the piece accessible to hearing and deaf viewers alike, and to share the vast possibilities of language and communication. The film was selected for the dramatic competition at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and won the Gordon Parks Award for Directing from the Independent Feature Project in 1999. Compensation was introduced by Academy Museum President Jacqueline Stewart and featured in the Black Independent Film showcase on TCM in July 2022. A restoration and release of the film by the Criterion Collection is in the works for 2023. In Davis' earlier short film, Cycles (1989), a young woman performs African-based purification rituals as she awaits her period. Visually experimental, especially in its use of stop-motion sequences, the film also features music from throughout the Black diaspora, resulting in a unique film language that honors African American women. 

Zeinabu irene Davis is an independent filmmaker and Professor of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. She is comfortable working in narrative, experimental, and documentary genres. Her work is passionately concerned with the depiction of women of African descent. A selection of her award-winning works includes a drama about a young slave girl for both children and adults, Mother of the River (1996); a love story set in Afro-Ohio, A Powerful Thang (1991), and Spirits of Rebellion: Black Cinema from Los Angeles (2016). Professor Davis has received numerous grants and fellowships from such sources as the National Black Programming Consortium, Rockefeller Foundation, the American Film Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Davis is currently working on two films, a dramatic short about an experience of COVID-19 entitled Pandemic Bread and a hybrid documentary, Stars of the Northern Sky, which tells the stories of the legal trials of abolitionists Sojourner Truth, Phyllis Wheatley, and Marie Joseph Angelique. 

The program will begin at 6:30pm with a dessert and drinks reception (dessert from the Bread Market Garden; drink tickets from FilmScene). After the screening, Zeinabu irene Davis will join Cinematic Arts PhD student Andrea Schuster for an in-person conversation with the audience. An ASL interpreter will be present. 

OUT OF THE ARCHIVE: BLACK WOMEN BEHIND THE LENS is a three-week screening and discussion series that celebrates the pioneering work of Black women filmmakers from the 1970s to the present. Drawing inspiration from the first-ever Black women’s film festival, the 1976 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, the series features rare and recently restored works from groundbreaking directors including Maya Angelou, Michelle Parkerson, Ayoka Chenzira, Kathleen Collins, Monica Freeman, and Zeinabu irene Davis, among others. The majority of the screenings will include post-screening conversations with the filmmakers and/or special guests. Join us at FilmScene to celebrate the history and future of Black women’s cinema.

The series is co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, the Mellon-Funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative, and the Department of Cinematic Arts. The series has also been generously supported by the departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Communication Studies, Dance, English, Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies, History, Theatre Arts; the Center for Human Rights; the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the College of Education; the School of Journalism and Mass communication; the School of Music, the Bijou Film Board, and the Black Visual Culture Group. 

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact FilmScene at 319-358-2555. Please contact Hayley O'Malley (hayley-omalley@uiowa.edu) with any additional questions.