Compensation (1999) - August 26, 2025

[Scottie]

Compensation (1999)

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.

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

https://www.criterion.com/films/31494-compensation