On the Return of Compensation: LA Rebellion Filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis’s Masterpiece About Communication and Connection

COMPENSATION 

(Zeinabu irene Davis, 1999, USA, 92 minutes) 

Because I had loved so deeply, 

Because I had loved so long, 

God in His great compassion 

Gave me the gift of song.

–Paul Laurence Dunbar, excerpt from "Compensation" (1905)

 

Part I: The History of the Release

Until earlier this year, thanks to a limited run by Janus Films, I hadn't heard of Compensation, Zeinabu irene Davis's uniquely beautiful and profound film. In 2000, the Sundance Channel had made it available for subscribers, and then in 2021, the Criterion Channel had done the same. Criterion also made her other narrative feature, 1991's A Powerful Thang, and three short films available, but I wasn't a subscriber at that time, though I am now. 

 

Outside of subscribers to those channels and visitors to Maya Cade's Black Film Archive, though, Compensation has languished in obscurity largely because the film, which Davis finished shooting in 1993, disappeared from view almost as soon as it entered the world in 1999 (in 2026, Cade, a former Criterion strategist and Library of Congress scholar, will take the helm of Milestone Films, a specialist in lost films from marginalized voices). Though the film was also released on video, it never had a proper theatrical release.

 

One critical review in Variety in 2000, and distributors failed to materialize, despite the fact that Compensation was named Best First Feature at the Spirit Awards, among other accolades; Joe Leydon, who wasn't completely dismissive, described it as "indifferently executed" and pronounced its "theatrical prospects [as] weak." By contrast, Roger Ebert, in the Chicago Sun-Times, proclaimed it "a small, quiet, enchanting film," but his kind words were, apparently, not enough.  

 

Over the years, I've often written about films that didn't get their due until after their makers had passed. I don't believe it's a coincidence that many of them, like Jessie Maple's directorial debut, Will, and Christina Hornisher's sole feature, Hollywood 90028, were made by women, people of color, or both in the case of Davis--except she's alive and well. Though she hasn't made another narrative feature, she and her entire family contributed to the refurbishing of Compensation, including daughters Desti and Maazi with husband and screenwriter Marc Arthur Chéry, who assisted with the color correction and descriptive titles–alongside Hard of Hearing filmmaker Alison O' Daniel (The Tuba Thieves)–that make her film shine brighter than ever.  

 

Not long after this year's theatrical release in February, which followed the premiere of the 4K "rejuvenation"--Davis's preferred term–at last year's New York Film Festival, Criterion announced a video release, which is out now. 

Right: Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1890 / Ohio History Connection

In addition to the black-and-white film, it offers several special features, including the panel discussion at the premiere with Davis, Chéry, and other collaborators. Sadly, cinematographer Pierre H. L. Désir Jr., who appears on the commentary track, passed away prior to the premiere of both film and video. His work throughout is really quite tremendous.

 

Part 2: The Rejuvenated Release

 

Compensation opens with the 1905 poem from Chicago laureate Paul Laurence Dunbar from which it takes its title combined with Reginald R. Robinson's ragtime piano score, followed by a series of still photographs depicting The Great Migration set to ambient sound (which has been enhanced since 1999). It's a remarkably effective way to reproduce the 1900s on a modest budget, not least because Davis took great care in selecting images from eight archives, including those of Gallaudet University and the Chicago Historical Society. (Gallaudet, an educational institution in Washington DC geared towards Deaf students, is the subject of Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim's stirring Apple TV+ documentary Deaf President Now! about a student-led push to hire the school's first Deaf president.)

 

The prologue precedes a silent-film sequence featuring two young ladies, elegantly dressed in white, relaxing under an umbrella by the shores of Lake Michigan in 1906; Davis will return to this beach throughout the film. The music continues, but the dialogue plays out as title cards decorated with Haitian and Kenyan imagery (Davis studied playwrighting in Kenya). 

If the entire mise-en-scène brings to mind Julie Dash's dreamy 1991 meditation Daughters of the Dust, it's no coincidence. LA Rebellion filmmakers Dash and Killer of Sheep's Charles Burnett served as two of Davis's mentors at UCLA Film School, and both served as crew members on her 1986 short, Crocodile Conspiracy, that accompanies the new release.  

A young woman named Malindy (dancer Michelle A. Banks) reads, eats, and converses with her younger companion, Tildy (Nirvana Cobb), by way of a portable chalkboard on which the two write out their words. Malindy, like the actress, is Deaf. Davis discovered her through a performance of Waiting for Godot she and Chéry attended in St. Paul, Minn., and knew she had to not only cast her, but reconfigure the film around her. Banks rewards the director's faith in her with a sympathetic and occasionally playful performance. Malindy comes across as proud, intelligent, and confident. 

 

After Gallaudet University segregated in 1905, and kicked out its Black and Indigenous students, Malindy returned to Chicago, where she works as a dressmaker. She meets Arthur (Chicago Med's John Earl Jelks), a Mississippi migrant and mandolin player who works in a meatpacking plant, during one of her trips to the beach. He's intrigued, but when he finds out she's Deaf and communicates by writing, he confesses that he doesn't know how to read. She offers to teach him, and a tentative relationship ensues. None of this happens right away; there is some resistance on Malindy's part, but she finds out soon enough that Arthur is a good-hearted soul. He just hasn't enjoyed the same economic and educational advantages as her.

 

Then, something surprising happens. If you haven't seen the film or heard much about it, you may want to stop reading. I had no idea what was coming, and found it pretty delightful. Davis sticks with the B&W 16mm film stock, but opens on a shot of the Chicago skyline in the late-20th century as the music builds to a more forceful percussive score from master drummer and multi-instrumentalist Atiba Y. Jali. The Rogers Park locations remain much the same, but it's the 1990s, and the world moves at a faster pace. 

Davis returns to the beach, but this time she introduces Malaika (also played by Banks); most everything else has changed. 

Malindy was a Deaf woman living in a hearing world, but Malaika, a printer and graphic artist, lives in more progressive times. She and her friends communicate using American Sign Language. She isn't as isolated as Malindy, but she's just as protective of her person. Neither woman feels incomplete without a man, and both are resistant to male advances. It goes unspoken, but it's possible that hearing men have tried to take advantage of them. When Malaika meets Nico (also played by Jelks), a children's librarian, she rejects him at first. In both guises, he comes across as a little goofy. 

Malaika's first impression appears as a thought bubble: "This brother ain't got no good sense." To Nico's credit, he's as persistent as Arthur, though neither man is a pest. He senses that the attraction is mutual, but he'll have to prove his worth. Like Arthur, he's eager to communicate with this self-possessed young lady, and doesn't view her deafness as an impediment. 

Without telling her, he signs up for ASL lessons, and because Malaika didn't share his name, her hearing sister, Aminata (K. Lynn Stephens), doesn't realize he's one of her students. On the contrary, Malaika's friends and family worry that a hearing man is the last thing she needs--a fear Malindy's mother had about Arthur--and when Nico tries out his newfound ASL skills, she's quick to correct his errors, but it's clear she's otherwise quite thrilled. 

Both couples have their challenges. 

Even as Nico is learning to speak Malaika's language, she often hangs around with Bill (Christopher Smith), a dancer who is also Deaf. If anything, she's even closer to him than to her girlfriends. One day, Nico drops by Malaika's apartment to find the two dancing to Chicago house music, and he watches awkwardly until they ask him to join them. If two of the dancers can't hear the music, all three can feel it, respond to it, and vibe with each other. My only complaint is that Davis cuts away too soon–the scene is so hypnotic, I wanted more. 

Malaika and Nico also attend a performance in which Bill moves with grace and athleticism to a musical version of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem. To my mind, he's coded as gay, though Davis never spells it out in so many words. 

If the sequences set in the 1990s aren't silent, she uses subtitles for the signed dialogue and artfully-placed open-captioned titles to describe music and sounds for Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewers. Though I've seen many films about Deaf characters, it's often felt that they were aimed more at hearing audiences, not least when Deaf actors have been excluded. 

Since 1986, Marlee Matlin has been the exception that proves the rule, and Davis has cited Children of a Lesser God, the film for which Matlin won the Oscar for best actress, as one of the inspirations behind her film, though the hearing director was a pioneer, too, for building a film around a Deaf character, hiring Deaf actors, and making the film as accessible as possible for Deaf audiences. (Deaf actress Shoshannah Stern's documentary, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, comes to PBS's American Masters on October 14.) 

For all the good things that happen in Compensation, bad things happen, too. There's none of the drug use or gun violence often associated with city stories, but like any decade, the 1900s and 1990s had their perils, particularly for Black people. If Malaika and Nico have it better than Malindy and Arthur in many ways, both couples face challenges they won't be able to overcome, and the foreshadowing begins from the start: Paul Laurence Dunbar, son of formerly enslaved parents, was dying from tuberculosis when he wrote "Compensation." The Dayton, Ohio poet and novelist, who counted Frederick Douglass among his many admirers, died in 1906 at 33. 

In that sense, the film hews to the form of a silent-era melodrama in which an indomitable heroine, often played by Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish, withstands every kind of calamity. It's hard not to wish for happier endings–there are two in this case–but it wouldn't be the same film otherwise. Compensation is about seizing the moments that make life living. 

In comparing reviews of the film in the past and in the present, I found a striking difference: audiences now are considerably more receptive and appreciative of Davis's entwining of love stories that reflect evolving movements around the rights of women, Black people, and people with disabilities. Lisa Kennedy, for instance, made it a Critic's Pick in The New York Times, Robert Daniels gave it four stars at RogerEbert.com, and in 2021, The New Yorker's Richard Brody stated, "Compensation is one of the greatest American independent films ever made."  

From today's perspective, Davis's concerns don't seem radical necessarily, but though rooted in the realities of the past, her film really was ahead of its time. More recent ventures like Todd Haynes's two-timeline Wonderstruck and Sian Heder's Oscar winner CODA feature Deaf characters played by Deaf actors--like Marlee Matlin as a choir singer's mother--but Compensation stands alone, even in 2025, for centering a Black protagonist. 

In addition to the invaluable rejuvenating efforts of Janus, Criterion, and The UCLA Film and Television Archive, which has done yeoman's work in revitalizing the key works of the LA Rebellion, the National Film Registry selected Compensation for preservation just last year, ensuring that Zeinabu irene Davis’s remarkable labor of love will never be lost or forgotten again. 

 

Compensation is available from The Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and DVD. Images from the IMDb (Michelle A. Banks, Nirvana Cobb and John Earl Jelks along with the Chicago skyline), Afterglow (Zeinabu irene Davis on the set), Dayton Daily News (John Laurence Dunbar / Ohio History Connection), DVD Beaver (opening title card), MoMA (Banks and Jelks), Criterion Forum (Jelks, Banks, and Christopher Smith), and Janus Films (Banks and Jelks).