Black Debutantes: Black women directors in a season of rediscovery and celebration

‘Black Debutantes: A Collection of Early Works by Black Women Directors’, the season I curated at BFI Southbank in London in May, emerged as a culmination of my passions, frustrations and hopes for the UK film scene.

Of the 672 feature films released in the UK in 2024, only 12 per cent were entirely written and directed by women and non-binary people, according to research by Reclaim the Frame – and that figure is obviously significantly smaller for Black women. My role as curator is not to spoon-feed audiences films they already love, but to act as a bridge between the audience and lesser-known curiosities.

I suggested a version of ‘Black Debutantes’ to BFI lead programmer Kim Sheehan in early 2024, shaped by a single question: which Black woman director has a filmography extensive enough to dominate a typical BFI season – 12 films, two screenings of each? I meant the kind of retrospective that helped form my own film education: explorations of an auteur’s filmography and their lore, in which wider social and political phenomena, or a country or city’s history, are viewed through the perspective of one (typically white, male) director – like those I adore, such as Robert Altman, Mike Leigh or Martin Scorsese.

The answer is no one. There are no Black women directors with filmographies big enough to carry a season on their own, even acclaimed names like Ava DuVernay or Gina Prince-Bythewood. Beyond this, I noticed a pattern: Black women directors would often have only one theatrical feature to their name. My initial pitch was for a programme that doubled as an enraged call to action about this injustice. Why is it, when it comes to feature films – made for cinema – Ngozi Onwurah (Welcome II The Terrordome, 1995), Bridgett M. Davis (Naked Acts, 1996), Cauleen Smith (Drylongso, 1998) and Zeinabu irene Davis (Compensation, 1999) should only have a single film under their belt?

Not in the final programme, but significant additions to that list include Leslie Harris (Just Another Girl on the I.R.T, 1992), Ayoka Chenzira (Alma’s Rainbow, 1994) and Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust, 1991 – though we did screen her 1982 short Illusions).

It’s hard not to see this as hostility from an at worst racist and at best uninterested industry. Many of these filmmakers and artists have continued to make work beyond the realms of the traditional feature, and it is disappointing how Black artists in all mediums are forced to contend with an industry’s will to keep them in a constant state of emerging, being rediscovered and reappraised.

It is important not only to point fingers at an industry that failed these incredible Black women artists, but to celebrate where these filmmakers began and critically examine how their careers evolved or diverged. Looking beyond the filmmakers who have only made one traditional feature, ‘Black Debutantes’ also showcased the debut feature films of more established figures, such as Euzhan Palcy (Sugar Cane Alley, 1983), Amma Asante (A Way of Life, 2004) and Dee Rees (Pariah, 2011). Jessie Maple’s Will (1981) and Davis’s Compensation both had newly restored prints premiere in the season, offering a chance for UK audiences to watch the films in the context of their contemporaries, in dialogue with the work of other Black women. Many of the other films hadn’t been screened in the UK for years, while Monica Sorelle’s Mountains (2023) and Shatara Michelle Ford’s Test Pattern (2019) hadn’t been distributed in the UK at all.

The season also held special events for under-25s, a community screening and introductions from filmmakers, including – in the shorts programme – a surprise intro by Onwurah before her Flight of the Swan (1992). I had the pleasure of hosting the ‘Exhibiting Black Cinema’ panel with inspirational industry figures Ashley Clark (Criterion Collection), Isra Al Kassi (TAPE Collective) and Carmen Thompson (We Are Parable).

As awareness of the season grew, the cinemas filled with Black people of all ages, many visiting BFI Southbank for the first time. At a screening of Naked Acts, an audience member told me, “I am sixty years old and I have waited sixty years to see this film.”

After the season ended, I visited Steve McQueen’s Resistance exhibition at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. I was stopped by a group of Black people who told me they had watched every film at ‘Black Debutantes’. I felt an incredible gratitude on behalf of the filmmakers for the ways their work had touched people.

The response from the filmmakers themselves was immense. Frances-Anne Solomon (What My Mother Told Me, 1995) wrote an intimate blog post detailing the backlash she faced at the time of her film’s release in 1995. She ends the piece by saying, “I hope, by sharing this film and the process behind it, I honor not just what my mother told me, but all the stories passed down silently through women and time.” I hope ‘Black Debutantes’ did something similar.