In particular, I was recently blown away by two ARRAY films that were added to Netflix late last year: Burning Cane, the debut from filmmaker Phillip Youmans, who was 19 when he wrote, directed, photographed and co-edited the film, and The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, written and directed by Kathleen Hepburn and Indigenous filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. ARRAY’s website makes this mission pretty clear-“Our work is dedicated to the amplification of independent films by people of color and women filmmakers globally”-and docuseries like They Gotta Have Us, about the influence of black identity on pop culture Jezebel, about a young black woman working as a cam girl in the ’90s and The Burial of Kojo, a magical realist tale told from the perspective of a young girl in Ghana, are all worth your time.
Ava DuVernay has long championed underrepresented voices through her film distribution company ARRAY, and thanks to a partnership with Netflix in 2016, many of ARRAY’s films end up streaming there exclusively.
