In my earliest years as a filmmaker, I studied at Sankofa in Washington, D.C. under Haile Gerima.
Those lessons were not just classes in screenwriting or directing. They were lessons in stance. In discipline. In authorship.
They were political education and orientation.
Haile did not teach us how to make movies that would be accepted. He taught us how to make the films we were called to make.
He does not separate cinema from the condition of Black people globally, nor does not treat film as escape. He treats it as intervention.
In this clip I filmed of him years ago, Haile responds to the demand that he “entertain” with a line that still lands like a boundary:
“At a time like this, nobody has a right to ask me to entertain.”
And later, he names the disconnect plainly:
“It doesn’t go with the reality of our situation.”
He continues with the same clarity. He makes the work he needs to make. He puts it where he puts it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to see it.
He teaches that authorship requires clarity about who you are accountable to. That the camera is not a toy. That distribution does not determine legitimacy. That independence is not aesthetic. It is discipline.
His films, including Sankofa, are not interested in making oppression digestible. They are interested in confrontation, memory, and reclamation.
Through him, I learned that I did not have to dilute urgency to be viable. That seriousness is not an obstacle. That storytelling can be aligned with liberation.
In a moment where spectacle is constant and distraction is marketed as relief, his words feel even more pointed.
Cinema can sedate or it can liberate.
Opening the Vault with gratitude for a teacher who was born for liberation.
The Director’s Vault is an archive of my work across fifteen years as an independent filmmaker. I will be sharing clips and materials from my digital series, short films, interview work, early trailers, music videos, and a hip hop performance archive, along with projects that never had a proper public home.
I will always consider myself an independent filmmaker because independence is stance. It is the decision to protect authorship, to build from the inside out, and to stay accountable to the people and the truths that made you.
Welcome to The Director’s Vault.
Honored to open it with Haile Gerima.
Still building.
