Just six of more than 1,000 titles in the prestigious Criterion Collection are by African-American directors. Why?
Just six of more than 1,000 titles in the prestigious Criterion Collection are by African-American directors. Why?
A Film Pantheon That Omits Black Directors
A Film Pantheon That Omits Black Directors
A Film Pantheon That Omits Black Directors
The Criterion Collection is Hollywood’s most prestigious Blu-ray/DVD archive. But just six of more than 1,000 titles are byAfrican-American directors.
Why? Here’s what my colleague and I found →
A Film Pantheon That Omits Black Directors
To answer that question, Kyle Buchanan and I spoke to several directors, critics and archivists. “It’s been an ongoing conversation among Black filmmakers,” the director Ava DuVernay told us. “It’s not even an open secret.”
A Film Pantheon That Omits Black Directors
Then, another colleague, Ben Kenigsberg, crunched the numbers:461 directors as of June 30, but only eight (four American, four from overseas) were Black.And they included just one Black woman: Martinique’s Euzhan Palcy (below).
A Film Pantheon That Omits Black Directors
Why does it matter? As another archival distributor put it, “The folks who are left out of the lists start to become literally personae non grata. Not worth talking about, or hiring, or watching.”
A Film Pantheon That Omits Black Directors
Criterion President Peter Becker has been the company’s ultimate decision-maker since the ’90s. He told us he has “blind spots” that led him to overlook or devalue the work of Black directors
“There’s nothing I can say about it that will make it OK,”Becker added. “The fact that things are missing, and specifically that Black voices are missing, is harmful, and that’s clear.”
Read our full examination of the Criterion Collection here