Portals and Expansions: Black Film Distribution

The stars!—the day’s leading Black stars, Diana Ross, Lena Horne, Richard Pryor, and Michael Jackson, filled the cast. The music!—produced by Quincy Jones and distributed by Motown Records, it gave new dimensions to the sound. But as the story goes, the WOW! was not enough to charm audiences into seats. 

The Wiz premiered in the wake of Blaxploitations—beloved, cheaply made yet high-profit Black action films. The fading success of a genre that saved the studio system had Hollywood seeking revenue peaks elsewhere. Universal Pictures treated production of The Wiz, the most expensive Hollywood musical at that point, like every other blockbuster. The studio’s mandate was to get bankable stars to generate funds and buzz and develop a release campaign that mirrored its other Blockbuster successes. With leading white dramatic director Sidney Lumet at the helm and Hollywood’s go-to Black-oriented white writer Joel Schumacher (Sparkle, 1976) on script, Universal checked their boxes. 

The Wiz remains a testament to cinema as the translation of ideas and narrative into culturally understood codes—racial, sexual, class-oriented, and otherwise. White directors, writers, distributors, and producers have not historically cared how their Black-oriented media reaches the Black masses. Instead, white Hollywood creators spend their time convincing their de facto white audiences that their Black-oriented art is accessible to white sensitivities. The marketing and distribution plans for The Wiz evidenced this impulse as Universal released the film into white cinemas and newspapers. This one-size-fits-all approach to distribution failed The Wiz and influenced the marketing for many Black releases from studios and independent distributors that followed.

At its essence, film distribution depends on a checklist of external validation. Before an independent film is selected for distribution, there is often an inquiry into whether it has received a New York Times review, a feature at Sundance or another established festival, or is beloved by an independent curator. This exporting of taste for institutions to corroborate binds film distributors to an echo chamber of white sensibilities and away from a unique point of view and ongoing accountability. Inversely, Black spectatorship of cinema has remained a duty akin to Black civic participation. For generations of Black moviegoers, cultural participation is a divine order, a calling to protect Black cultural heritage in a way that mirrors the commitment to Black voting rights. Whether it’s feeling a duty to line up for the latest Black film release or starting our own awareness campaigns for Black media, Black cultural participation moves all media forward. If this is true, why haven’t the worlds of distribution and Black cultural participation successfully met across time?

The earliest iteration of my own public work—Black Film Archive (blackfilmarchive.com), a first-of-its-kind digital repository of Black cinematic heritage from 1898 to 1999—was ideated and created in the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests. Black spectators began to take to the streets to question their relationship to policing, representation, and death. Most Black people are natural archivists, collecting mementos of our existence as proof of our contributions to a family, community, or ecosystem. I began with building a digital archive of my family albums. Black Film Archive is an extension of that work, giving the same care to the directors, actors, and film workers as members of my greater family.

With Black Film Archive, I expanded a portal. Every archive is a portal to the past, a reflection of what an archivist values, and it mirrors what they believe society does (or should do). In culling a collection, an archivist leaves markers of memories, histories, and documents that give the emerging future a dimension of past visions, time, places, and circumstances. The bridge between here and now and there and then is infinitely rendering the other. Distribution and public engagement are often the only publicly accessible openings to that portal. 

In May 2025, another opening was created when it was announced that I would take over Milestone Films and become a film distributor. Milestone’s founders believe their purpose was to “fuck with the film canon” and make choices against the canon’s status quo, distributing Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), Kathleen Collins’s Losing Ground (1982), Bridgett M. Davis’s Naked Acts (1996), and Ayoka Chenzira’s Alma’s Rainbow (1994), among countless other films across the filmmaking spectrum. The modus operandi of “fucking with the film canon” will continue as Milestone Films transitions to Black ownership and becomes one of very few Black-owned film distributors. 

This moment arrives as I reflect on the long history of Black directors making a way out of no way, distributing their own films when their works were abandoned by an industry that could not contain their fullness. In each moment of accomplishment, there is credit to a past legacy whose wings we all sail on. With my undertaking of Milestone Films and its 300-plus film catalog, it will become the largest Black-owned repertory film distributor.  

The portal opening for Milestone Films comes after my rediscovery of Naked Acts, which was neglected by industry gatekeepers. I rediscovered it at Indiana University’s Black Film Center Archive in the fall of 2022, imagining a world that would welcome this culture-shifting work. From a Twitter DM to Davis to leading the press and distribution strategy, Naked Acts was released to wide acclaim. 

Through working on Naked Acts, I am reminded that neglect from the industry is all some Black filmmakers know. Decision makers and gatekeepers have chosen to abandon and/or neglect the contributions of Black filmmakers to the craft. That history of neglect has shaped an entire culture’s relationship to distribution and filmmaking. Some Black filmmakers went out on their own, while others left filmmaking altogether. As president and owner of Milestone Films, I hope to show care for these unearthed Black works. 

My advice to filmmakers and video artists: you must understand the role of distribution in your work. Every distribution deal comes with a cost you may not be willing to pay. Ask yourself: are distributors willing to recognize the integrity and fullness of your work? Is autonomy more important to you than wide reach? Do you feel empowered to make this decision? If you do, do you believe the film distributor is acting with your vision in consideration? I recommend visiting The Distribution Playbook as a place to start and explore your options while learning about self-distribution. 

My fellow distributors must know that many of the racial equity promises made in the wake of 2020 have not been fulfilled, nor have they been forgotten by the filmmaking community. How can we work together to ensure films receive the life they deserve? Capital is not the only thing to gain; care must remain at the center. The economic challenges that have shifted many film distribution business models from large market share to simply getting by are all the more reason to find ways of collaboration, new pathways of connection, and transformation beyond the usual entry points of cinema. I am heartened by my colleagues who take a moment to protect the global majority cinema’s legacy by keeping their ear to the ground and their sights on something beyond profit. 

And to the moviegoers who know what’s at stake for Black film’s future and see it in the same realm of political participation, remember that you can vote with your dollars too. If you have the means, contributing to the campaigns of filmmakers whose work moves you can make all the difference. But an encouraging word to a filmmaker can lift them up too.

I believe in Black cinema’s future and Black films getting their proper release through distribution with culturally oriented marketing, robust relationships with cinemas and exhibition venues in our communities, and director/estate involvement. That future is more possible when we—artists, filmmakers, and audiences—work on it together. 

Unearthing underseen Black cinematic gems and hidden-in-plain-sight treasures remains my North Star as a distributor, but that is only possible when the community continues to hold me to task. Trust is an active relationship, and I intend to honor the trust I’ve garnered across time as an archivist, film worker, and now as a distributor. Whether you’re a Black film fan, director, or movie worker, the path ahead will be carved with you in mind. As one portal opens, another expands.