COMPENSATION: 20th Anniversary Screening

Join UCSD's Department of Communication and the SD Central Library for a 20^th anniversary screening of Compensation, the groundbreaking independent drama, featuring pioneering African American Deaf actress Michelle Banks, by award-winning filmmaker and UCSD professor Zeinabu Irene Davis. Banks and Davis will facilitate a discussion after the film. Simultaneous interpretation in American Sign Language (ASL) and English will be provided.

This screening is being organized in coordination with parallel events at UCSD the previous day (Thursday, October 24) including a panel discussion on Black Deaf Representations.

Please scroll down to register.  Refreshments served.

Inspired by the 1906 poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Compensation tells two parallel love stories set in the turn-of-the-century and present-day Chicago, both about the relationship between a deaf woman and a hearing man. The same actors are featured in both stories, articulating the timeless nature of the obstacles they encounter. Both relationships promise lifelong happiness until the two couples are threatened by the epidemics of their eras.

Compensation is one of the seminal films from the L.A. Rebellion film movement. Per the Sundance Film Festival, "Davis created a breakthrough exploration of black deaf culture and reinvented 'silent film' as a cinematic form for hearing and non-hearing audiences alike. A groundbreaking film about human beings caught up in a powerful and redemptive love that still cannot eradicate the presence of death.”

Compensation has been acclaimed at film festivals worldwide including Sundance, Burkina Faso’s FESPACO, and Toronto and ran on BET, Starz, and Sundance cable channels as well. As Compensation nears its 20th anniversary, it has garnered deserved renewed attention (see this review in the New Yorker).

Presented in conjunction with the 2019 One Book One San Diego selection The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.

____________

Parking is underground and free with 2-hour validation. The Central Library is one block from the Park & Market stop on the Trolley Blue and Orange lines.  Bus routes 11 stops right in front of the library.