Gerima

Gerima refers to Haile Gerima, an Ethiopian-born filmmaker and educator whose work has been influential in the development of Black independent cinema in the United States. He is known for creating politically engaged narratives that explore Black history, memory, and the legacies of colonialism and slavery. His career centers on a commitment to noncommercial storytelling and to producing work outside mainstream Hollywood channels.

Gerima’s feature films include Bush Mama (1979), a social realism drama that examines poverty, violence, and community life in an urban Black neighborhood, and Sankofa (1993), a historical drama about the transatlantic slave trade that integrates contemporary and archival storytelling to address memory and culpability. His films are recognized for their formal daring, use of long takes, and a focus on collective voices and historical analysis rather than conventional star-driven narratives.

In addition to directing, Gerima has taught film and mentored emerging filmmakers. He has been a longtime faculty member at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he contributed to training a new generation of Black filmmakers and scholars. His work is widely studied in courses on African cinema, diasporic studies, and film theory, and it has been the subject of retrospectives and critical writing that situates him within the broader history of independent and activist cinema.

Gerima’s impact lies in expanding the scope of what Black cinema could address and how it could be told, emphasizing memory as a political tool and challenging audiences to confront historical violence and its ongoing social repercussions.