Cast: John Earl Jelks, Michelle A. Banks, Nirvana Cobb, Kevin L. Davis, Christopher Smith

4K restoration

The Future of Film is Female continues its year-long celebration of 90s cinema with a screening of the newly-restored COMPENSATION. To make an additional $10 donation to The Future of Film is Female, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

“As a word, Compensation evokes labor. In the director Zeinabu irene Davis’s beautifully woven drama of the same name, work does get its close-ups. But it is the loves, labors and vulnerabilities two couples in two different eras experience that make this black-and-white film from 1999 such an elegant and presciently inventive work. … Davis pays homage to the work of at least two of her predecessors from the University of California, Los Angeles: Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust. The U.C.L.A. movement was tagged the “L.A. Rebellion.” The arrival of this restored beauty — which was entered into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry last year) proves that Davis knows how to rebel in her own distinctive way.” — Lisa Kennedy, The New York Times, Feb. 20, 2025