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Cadeannounced the launch of her archival website on Twitterlast week, and the adulation has been fervent.
Their importance to the history of Black cinema is immeasurable.
Black-film history is often reduced to a small batch of titles released in the past 30 years.
Cade aims to change that.
This thread started during the summer of [Black Lives Matter] protests.
People were examining and reflecting on themselves, she explains.
I wanted to say that our reflections arent as black and white as weve been made to believe.
Theres a wealth of stories to pull from.
She wanted to provide an alternative to the flat, oversimplified definitions of what makes a Black film.
But I also have to ask,What does the resource I want to build look like?
She speaks about the ways these movies have silently resided on YouTube or Vudu with little fanfare.
Either major streamers are rarely attracted to adding these titles or bury them under the glut of bigger titles.
When will these films be treasured and seen and celebrated on a grand scale?
Im hoping this is their moment, says Cade.
These are segmented across sites.
I think thats what people are also looking for.
By celebrating these works, Cade hopes the false assumptions about what a Black film is changes.
So often its Theres only been this bang out of Black film.
Were only represented this way.
Its a binary that isnt true, stemming from a limited context of Black-film history, she says.
When we are intentional about making history accessible, we can transform our collective memory.
For Cade, the jubilation in the form of emails the archive has received has been fulfilling.
Im from the South.
When they see you, theyre strolling by to say how proud they are of you.
Thats kind of what these emails feel like, she says.
But Cade isnt resting on her laurels just yet.
Black Film Archive is meant to evolve, to reshape to fit the needs of Black folks.
I have so many ideas, and Ive done this without money and resources, she says.
The thing that excites me about whats ahead is that its limitless.
