Nearly five years ago, in August of 2021, Maya Cade unveiled Black Film Archive. Her online database, with films spanning from the early days of cinema to, at the time, the 1970s, put many rare films and treasures of Black cinema under one digital roof. In the days and months that followed, the site became an instant success. In the years that have followed, it’s become an indispensable resource.
Since 2011, Cade has moved at a torrid pace, serving as a programmer-in-residence at Indiana University (2022), becoming a scholar in residence at the Library of Congress (2022-2024), programming the “Try a Little Tenderness” screening series for the Academy Museum (2023), and growing a corresponding newsletter to the site. Recently, Amy Heller and Dennis Doros, who are preparing to retire, announced that Cade will become the owner and president of Milestone Films–the imperative distributor they founded that has restored the works of Charles Burnett, Kathleen Collins, Ayoka Chenzira, Bridgett M. Davis, and more.
Cade spoke with RogerEbert.com over Zoom about the continuing mission of Black Film Archive, the next boom for Black independent film, and taking over Milestone Films.
I first spoke with you on behalf of Vulture in 2021. Back then, the Black Film Archive was relatively new (it began in August of that year). What’s been your mission over the last five years?
I want to say this directly: Sometimes I feel like awareness is the lowest tier of knowledge. To make people aware of something is great. I think as I approach the five year anniversary in August, I am now, especially the last few years, trying to move away from awareness toward making knowledge tangible, to make it something that people carry with themselves. I think the last five years have been many things. I’ve had really wonderful opportunities to speak about Black cinema at large across the world. It’s really wonderful. But I think one of the joys has been being an archivist for Black directors. I help them with their own archives by gathering their material.
So, the Black Film Archive is not just the digital archive that you see. A lot of the work is tangible, like ensuring that another generation can learn from the papers and materials, the physicality of what these directors have to offer. Helping them get their things in an archive and finding out what they desire are some of the questions I’m fielding. Which is such an honor. To be able to speak not only to audiences that hope to discover their work, but also them, and ensuring that their work is always discoverable, that’s the real joy.
That’s fascinating because when the Black Film Archive began, one of the major twists of it was that it was an accessible digital archive. But you’re talking about marrying the digital and the physical conception we have of an archive. Was that always how you envisioned the Black Film Archive, with that two-prong approach?
So what’s interesting is that my archival sensibility comes to me by being from the South. Black American families in the South often have a family archivist, the person who is assigned to be the historian for the family. For my paternal family, for a long time, that was my grandfather. For my maternal family, it wasn’t necessarily anyone in particular. But right before the idea of Black Film Archive launched, I was building a digital archive for one part of my family. So my mom was mailing me undeveloped film from cameras, and I was processing them, scanning them, working the images to identify people, and all of these things as part of my first pandemic-era project. The building of Black Film Archive is an extension of that kind of tangibility of family archives.
Consequently, in many ways, I feel like these artists are members of my family. I want to protect them with the integrity of what your family is protected with. Not in the sense that I would flatten the truth. I don’t mean that. What I mean to say is that so often I meet Black directors who have not been given the care that they deserve, and their life and their career is shaped by that lack of care. I don’t want this to be another point of entry that is also shaped by that instinct because when you have an industry built on white supremacist principles as Hollywood is, the idea of how to sell something, what gets into certain festivals, what gets into certain things, all of these things are based off the commodification of something and the commodification of something has very specific rules.
Now you’re in an era where that commodification is also being said by the audience. This commodification and the belief of what Black film can do, I feel like Black Film Archive breaks those rules because it still is a widely visited website. It is the largest Black film newsletter. There are a lot of things that go into this that break the idea that Black film is one thing.
When you’re talking about handling these artists and their work with care, often, and of course you’re intimately aware of this, I find that when something is rediscovered, when you learn about its backstory, you find that they were kneecaped from the beginning by systematic forces that were out of their control.
What’s really interesting is that the idea of what Hollywood can do for a Black director is already this small [brings her hands within an inch of each other]. So what people are envisioning for their lives through Hollywood is already tiny. What is often happening is that if people are getting celebrated, they’re getting celebrated without compensation. If they are a public figure, they’re a Black public figure. The idea of who they exist as in the public imagination is tiny. So what I am often doing is showing people that there is a world for them. Whether they made a film in the 1990s, whether they made a film in the 1970s, their film never got out into the world. I want to show them that there is a world ready for them.
And so to answer your question directly, what possibility do these directors, writers, stars even feel? It depends. How we receive something is based on many factors: how someone looks, colorism, whether they have the right agent. It’s not a simple calculation. Also, what is their measure of success? That’s another important factor. And if someone has felt stifled from day one, that follows them. So, part of having kinship with elders of all stripes, is allowing them to tell the narrative of their life. It’s allowing them space to feel the hurt and harm that’s been waged against them. It’s reminding them that that point in the past doesn’t have to stop them today. And while it’s fair for them to feel that way, there is a world waiting for you.
I’ll give you a perfect example. Another part of what I am often doing is spending time in archives, trying to get a real sense of the history of Black film—not just the history that we know it to be—which led me to finding Bridgett M Davis’ “Naked Acts” in an archive two years ago. It had never received distribution. I brought it to Milestone Films where I am now the president and the co-founders, Dennis Doros and Amy Heller, automatically said “yes, we’re gonna distribute this” within a day of seeing the film. I also asked if I could be the creative consultant on the release: so, press, how the restoration happens, working with the director, all of those things.
“Naked Acts” becomes a wild success for its category. But a part of the narrative that Bridgett has around “Naked Acts” is that everyone rejected it for distribution, and sometimes people feel like stones are meant to be unturned. So when “Naked Acts” was a success, when we released it in 2024, I went to Bridgett and I was like: I feel like you should make another film. I finally convinced her and now I’m a producer on said film, which is called “Helga,” and we were able to raise a production budget of $25,000 in three days this past weekend. So, a lot of the work that I do is trying to support people’s vision for their own lives and using the resources or whatever I can to ensure that that’s possible.
Did it take much coaxing to get Bridgett to take another swing as a filmmaker?
It’s interesting, with Bridgett specifically, we talk really often. Every time we talk, I tell her: The world is ready for you. I’m not necessarily pushing harder than it’s necessary, but just that reminder is so important. I think there’s a lot of noise in the industry. There’s a lot of people saying your turn is over. That noise exists. I’m not adding to that chorus. I’m trying to start a new one. I’m trying to say: Listen. We need you. So many things are inspired by your existence. Let’s add another thing for people to be inspired by. But when an industry decides who you are and what your potential is, people feel that weight. So, it’s really about removing that and giving you back your wings, however possible.
We’ve been lucky enough to live through an era where so many Black films are being rediscovered from so many filmmakers, which was their only work. They never really got that extra swing due to the emotional and the professional violence of these systems. How much of an emotional hurdle is it for these filmmakers to re-enter this space?
That’s interesting. I’ll give you a perfect example. After “Naked Acts,” I was on a tear. I thought I was going to find all these films and it’s going to be so great. But not every process is simple. “Naked Acts” was simple. It was kind of a dream moment. It was at an archive in the best possible condition. Afterward, I started reaching out to this other filmmaker who has a second career now, a completely different career—I was able to find her because that career is public facing—and I wrote to her a note about how “Naked Acts” has come out and it was just featured in The New Yorker. This is what I’m excited to do. She wrote back to me and basically said that not every stone is meant to be unturned. She was grateful that from the description of her film that I would be interested in it, but she wasn’t ready to revisit it right now.
I think the most important thing is to respect the agency of artists. People often talk about Larry Clark, for example, who only wants this film to be shown in a cinema. Why would we be in an era that does not respect the agency of artists? Something about how people feel about the commodification of things, the misplaced instinct is to suggest that something else is possible. That you can have riches and all your dreams are going to come true. But what if that is no longer your dream? What if you feel satisfaction in the fact that you created something? And the commodification actually isn’t about the artist, it’s actually about an audience who demands more and more and more and more. But the artist doesn’t want a part of that. That’s actually a harder conversation to have. As we are talking about the industry now, that’s something I’m often speaking about with artists, with writers and stars. How do you maneuver that?
I mean, history tells us that we are about to enter a Black independent boom. I say this specifically because when we think about Melvin Van Peebles and how he innovated Black film in that era and opened the Blaxploitation boom, it’s because there was no other avenue. Hollywood was not going to accept his vision and Melvin Van Peebles was an uncompromising person. So the natural instinct was to create a new avenue for expression. A generation later the same thing happens with Spike Lee. Once “The Wiz” is a financial failure, Hollywood says, “I’m no longer investing in Black cinema.” There is no avenue after the Blaxploitation boom ends.
So, it makes way for Spike, it makes way for his contemporaries, it makes way for Miramax and all of these people to kind of say that if the major studios aren’t going to invest in this, then we are going to have investment in this moment and take a risk. When that wanes, suddenly, of course, the studios are making buddy cop films that are approaching Blackness in a way that is accessible and acceptable for the Hollywood fascination. The buddy cop becomes the vehicle in which Blackness is safe. That extends through the 2000s when we have comedians as stars. But once the transition from video to digital happens, Black independent filmmakers kind of get left behind. There isn’t a conscious effort to continue that investment. Things continue, but it’s not the Miramaxes. History tells us, however, that when we are being neglected, we always innovate. Often when people ask me if I feel optimistic about the future of Black film history, I tell them that I have no other choice but to be optimistic about the future of Black film. If Hollywood dismisses us, there is always something. The considerations are much different now, but there is always something.
You’re taking over Milestone Films. Do you see it as different from the Black Film Archive or will you try to fold them together in some way?
As I’m taking over Milestone, it is the largest Black-owned film distributor period, because I will be owner and president, not just president. There’s a weight of responsibility there that is so exciting for me. I think this is the natural evolution of a lot of what I’ve been doing, but as I know it to be at this moment, Black Film Archive will continue to be its own thing. I’m deeply committed to Black Film Archive’s future. Milestone Films will be its own thing.
But what is also true is that many of the most watched films of the Black Film Archive are Milestone Films: “Killer of Sheep,” “Losing Ground,” “Alma’s Rainbow,” “Naked Acts.” These are films I now distribute. I now have direct relationships with those filmmakers. So I think the advantage of being the creator and curator of Black Film Archive, as I go onto this era of Milestone Films, is I have an objective relationship with the audience I’m trying to serve. That, originally, was actually the entire intention of my work. I want to serve an underserved audience directly, and it’s really joyful to be in a position of doing so.
I think there are challenges ahead. When people say the industry is changing, theatrical is changing, that’s true. It is changing. But I never see change as an inherent negative. As you know, my previous career was being an audience strategist. That’s what I’ve done for Criterion and other places. At those places my question was always: How does something reach its audience directly? It’s a challenge that I feel very ready for, and Dennis and Amy through this transition have helped me answer it every which way.
As I make my own acquisitions, which I’ve begun to do, I’m often thinking about how people are obsessed with one corner of what Black cinema is. But there are three other corners that people are not touching. What lies ahead for me is asking why aren’t people chasing these films? Often when I contact rights holders, they’re like: No one’s ever asked me about that film before. So, we think that the touchstones of Black cinema have already been touched. But really I find every day that there is more and more and more and more. It’s just about the right person coming in at the right time.