I first saw a grainy, bootlegged version ofCompensationin college.
DEADLINE: Zeinabu, youre in New York?
Youre not usually a New Yorker, are you?
Zeinabu Irene DavisArturo Holmes/Getty Images for FLC
ZEINANU IRENE DAVIS:No, I live in San Diego.
Its very cold here in New York.
But its been good.
The audiences have been great.
We sold out Saturdays screening and Q&A and weve been at near capacity at other screenings.
And like the New York Film Festival screening, the audience is not what I expected.
I thought it would be more gray-haired people like me, but its not that.
Maybe if youre going to spend 15 or 20 on a film, you want to see something unusual.
DEADLINE: What audience did you have in mind when you first made the film?
DAVIS:I always wanted the broadest possible audience.
The film will have a special appeal to Black People and many others like the deaf and hard-of-hearing audience.
There still arent many films with a deaf or hard of hearing person of color as lead.
It gives us a way of communicating with each other.
Were all humans and we all still have pain and sorrow, but we also have joy and resilience.
Thats still the message of the film.
DEADLINE: Yeah I understand feeling happy.
Theres also a feeling of hope that comes from seeing an alternative or experimental work.
The piece gives you new ideas on how you’re free to communicate things.
You will for sure enjoy some of the new features in the rejuvenation.
For example, we expanded the on-screen captions.
I hope more filmmakers will start to use these tactics too.
DEADLINE: Technically, how did you approach the rejuvenation process?
Had you kept a lot of the original materials?
DAVIS:Im kind of a pack rat, so I keep everything.
UCLA had whats called the 16 mag track, which was the sound.
But the DAT tape was still clean.
We just had to find some legacy machines to play the tapes back.
Luckily, the place where I did the work, Crest Audio in LA, still had legacy equipment.
DEADLINE: Can you tell me how this re-release came about?
I hear it had something to do with the programmerAshley Clark.
DAVIS:Ashley Clark is an amazing curator and programmer.
Thats when Richard Brody at the New Yorker wrote aboutDaughters of the Dust, Sankofa, andCompensation.
Richard has been the biggest champion of the film.
Hes always writing about it.
Hes called it one of the greatest American independent films.
Ashley and the team have been able to rectify that situation.
Im grateful that that has taken place.
Its now just more inclusive of American cinema.
And then we had the restoration and now the re-release.
This is also an anniversary year for the film.
Its 25 years since it was released.
I shot the film in the 1990s but didnt finish it until 2000.
Thats one of the things we LA Rebellion filmmakers do.
We use our families in our films.
With Charles Burnett, you see his sister Angela Burnett.
We check that to include everyday people in their communities.
DEADLINE: Its great to hear you talking about the LA Rebellion in the present tense.
DAVIS:I claim them.
People like RaMell Ross and Khalil Joseph looked at our work and emulated some of that in their work.
He had an animation background and designed his own film lenses.
I do think they are deeply influenced, and thats why I say the LA Rebellion continues.
It just morphs into other filmmakers and people.
Also, I think its important to talk about how we deal with time.
Thats one of the beautiful things about film.
you’re able to play with form.
InCompensation, I jump back and forth between the early 1900s and the later 1900s.
you could manipulate time with cinema in ways that you cant in other art forms.
Im also thinking about the great filmmaker we just lost, Souleymane Cisse, an African giant.
I mean, look atYeelenorBaara, and how he manipulates time in those two films.
Those masterworks that he left us.
Weve always been interested in notions of how we represent time.
DEADLINE:Its so true.
So that experimentation were describing is really just us being us.
WithCompensation, we specifically tried to pull out some of that history.
At film school, we were bludgeoned withBirth of a Nation.
That was a real film made by a Black filmmaker called William Foster.
We tried to see if we could find that film and incorporate it intoCompensation.
But its lost or was maybe destroyed because it was most likely on nitrate film.
DEADLINE: Compensation is opening wide this week in the U.S. Do you have plans for an international release?
DAVIS:Yes, we have some preliminary plans in place for the UK.
So hoping maybe in the summer months.
Theres a festival and some other locations we can go to.
I would really like to engage with audiences in London.
DEADLINE: Do you have plans to make another feature film?
Its calledStars of the Northern Skyand follows the lives of three enslaved women of the North.
People often think slavery only happened in the American South but no it happened in the North too.
Im looking at Marie Joseph Angelique from Montreal.
A Black woman who supposedly burned down Montreal in 1731.
Phyllis walked on the streets of London and there is a plaque to commemorate her in the city.
