COMPENSATION (1999) - DVD & Blu-ray Release of Award-Winning Indie Drama

Product Description: A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and visibility. In dual performances, Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks play an educated dressmaker and an illiterate migrant in 1910s Chicago, and a resilient graphic artist and an endearing librarian living in the same city eight decades later. Employing archival photography, an original score blending ragtime and African percussion, and lyrical editing, Davis deftly intertwines the two couple’s stories, in ways both tender and tragic. Compensation is a landmark of American independent cinema that confronts the social forces and prejudices that hinder love.

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Movie Details

Available Formats (Purchasing Links)

Video

Audio

Subtitles

Special Features & Extras

Trailer and Clips

Pictures

MOVIE DETAILS

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Director: Zeinabu irene Davis

Starring: John Earl Jelks, Michelle A. Banks, Nirvana Cobb

Genre: Drama, History, Romance

Runtime: 92 min

Rating: Not Rated

Language: English

Studio: Criterion

Home Video Release Date: August 26, 2025

AVAILABLE FORMATS (Amazon):

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DVD - Criterion Collection

Blu-ray - Criterion Collection

VIDEO

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DVD

Codec: MPEG-2
Resolution: 480i
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Encoding Format: 16:9
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)

Blu-ray

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Region: Region A/1

AUDIO

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Dubbed:

DVD: None
Blu-ray: None

Audio Formats:

DVD: Dolby Digital 2.0
Blu-ray: LPCM 2.0

SUBTITLES

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DVD: English SDH

Blu-ray: English SDH

SPECIAL FEATURES & EXTRAS

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New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Zeinabu irene Davis, in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Wimmin with a Mission Productions, and in conjunction with the Sundance Institute, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Davis, screenwriter Marc Arthur Chéry, and director of photography Pierre H. L. Désir Jr.
Q&As with members of the cast and crew
Two short films by Davis, Crocodile Conspiracy (1986) and Pandemic Bread (2023), the latter with audio commentary featuring Davis and cast and crew members and descriptive audio
Interview with Davis from 2021
New program about select archival photographs and adinkra and vèvè symbols in the film
Trailer
English subtitles and intertitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and English descriptive audio
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Racquel Gates, a director’s note, and a conversation between Davis and artist Alison O’Daniel about the process of captioning the film