JAMAA FANAKA

As part of our pioneering effort to establish America’s first home-entertainment label dedicated to filmed entertainment by Black filmmakers and for Black audiences, Xenon Pictures began a long association with independent filmmaker Jamaa Fanaka in the late 1980s. In a split-rights arrangement with MGM, Xenon distributed several of Fanaka’s landmark films:

A writer, producer and director who emerged from UCLA’s influential L.A. Rebellion generation of Black filmmakers, Jamaa Fanaka (né Walter Gordon) was a fiercely independent voice whose films combined popular genre filmmaking with stories, characters and perspectives rarely represented on American screens.

Xenon is proud of our long association with Fanaka, beginning in the late 1980s and continuing until his death in 2012. Over nearly a quarter-century, Xenon worked with Fanaka to keep his groundbreaking films in circulation and introduce them to new generations of viewers, and we remain proud to have played a part in preserving and championing his remarkable independent legacy.