Just across the street from The Yard, sits Sankofa Video, Books, and Cafe. For nearly 30 years, Sankofa has provided an expansive selection of film and literature on the global Black experience, but it has also long been a community center for Howard University students and residents of northwest D.C.

For this episode of On The Yard, MSRC Director Dr. Benjamin Talton pays a visit to Sankofa Cafe and sits down with owner, storyteller, renowned filmmaker, and Howard alum Haile Gerima. They discuss Gerima’s films focused on the lives and experiences of people of African descent, including titles such as Black Lions, Roman Wolves and the cafe’s namesake, Sankofa. The conversation also delves into the commodification of Black stories by the film industry, Gerima’s experience filming in Ethiopia during the 1974 upheaval, and his experience teaching at Howard University.

Episode Guide:

00:00 Welcome to Sankofa Cafe

01:09 Meet Haile Gerima

01:46 Storytelling vs. Filmmaking

07:35 Black Cinema And ‘The Plantation Economy’

11:44 Sankofa Film And Symbol

15:23 Building A Community Institution

16:36 Haile’s Picks

21:04 Howard Years

25:36 Filming During Revolution

29:27 Ethiopia Identity Politics

31:36 Sankofa Community Power

34:38 Black Lions, Roman Wolves

38:17 Black Press Solidarity

39:42 Sankofa Cafe Farewell

On the Yard is a production of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and is produced by University FM.

Black stories aren’t made to be for entertainment

04:35: Entertainment is an industry by itself, but I think when you think of our story as entertainment, we do injustice to it, in my view, because we have not begun to tell our story. We have been people who've been robbed our stories. Our stories have been completely undermined, dwarfed, and to reclaim our story, I don't think we can do justice to it if we keep thinking entertainment. I think our story should be just a story, and the outcome should be it's from its own inherent originality and genuineness instead of forced entertainment.

Storytelling is the real battleground for Black stories

10:03: The issue here is, I think, especially Black people cannot afford to be entertaining because, fundamentally, all the contradictions are from the very idea of robbed people of their story. The story is the battleground. To me, the issue of race in America, and its crux, the crux of that issue is story, not being in charge of your story in the end.

Films as a staircase for growth

11:54: Every movie is a staircase of my own evolution and growth. And so, for me, without the films, the short films I did that are very dear to me in the sense they are my vehicle of growth in spelling cinema, trying to put my story cinematically.

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