What Is A ‘Black’ Film? Maya Cade’s Black Film Archive Has An Answer
The Black American film canon is an often untapped resource that many people, even the most ardent of film fans aren’t familiar with. That’s why film programmer and writer Maya Cade launched The Black Film Archive last year.
The Black Film Archive is a personal passion project of Cade’s dedicated to cataloging decades of Black American film histories from as early as the 1910s with the mission to share it with the masses. What began as a Black History Month Twitter thread she wrote for the Criterion Collection turned into a full on archival project.
Sparked by her general love for film and her reaction to the Summer 2020 uprisings against police brutality when people were turning to film to help process their feelings of rage and helplessness, Cade’s archive shows the vastness of Black life documented on screen. Her work has been eagerly embraced and celebrated by the film community, garnering her awards from prestigious institutions: the National Society of Film Critics Film Heritage Award and the New York Film Critics Circle Special Award. xoNecole caught up with Cade about the year she’s had since launching the site and what Black films mean to her.
xoNecole: When you decided to make the archive, did it feel intimidating or were you excited to do it?
Maya Cade: Intimidating – that's an interesting word. I'm a very self-assured person when I have set my sights on something. My only question is: How can I have the support I need to get this done? But as someone who knew that I didn't want to bring this to an institution, I knew I wanted to do this on my own, support really meant talking my friends’ ears off about it. It meant like allowing other film friends to fact-check the site and copy-edit the site for me. You know, those kinds of things that I just knew that I had that support. I knew that I could set out and people could look at it before it launched and be like: “Okay girl, great! Go on and go forth.”
I really am self-assured. I am a person who calculates every possible wrong thing. But I knew that my reasons for doing it, which really are to bring and collate Black film knowledge in one place outweighed any risk that could possibly have been. And my investment of time and energy was just so well worth it from the joy that it has brought people and the joy it's brought myself. I knew when I launched the site that how people reacted to it was outta my hands. I knew that I had done the best thing I possibly could have and that's all I set out to do.
xoNecole: Were you surprised by the reaction it got?
MC: My God, deeply. If I had launched it at 11-ish, by 1:00 PM, I had received 50 emails that were people saying: “Hey can I interview you for this? Are you interested in this thing and that thing?” And I'm just like, wow. And as a person who studies the internet – just as a user and my life before I started working in Black Film Archive full time, I was a social media strategist. So from what I know, there are very few internet-based projects for people who aren't necessarily famous in the way that we think of it. There are very few people who have launched something and it changed the direction of their life. Like, I can name very few of those who didn't have institutional support. So the surprise really comes from me that I was able to garner trust in a community, which is very hard. It's nothing you can buy. But to have people's trust and for them to feel like I'm – or the site is guiding them to where they wanna go with their full knowledge. That's the ultimate surprise, right? Trust is the hardest thing to garner, and for Black people to trust me? I mean, that's the gift.
xoNecole: There's a debate amongst cinephiles and film historians about what is a Black film. Whether it's just a film created by a Black filmmaker, a film with a predominantly Black cast who might have a white filmmaker. What was your thinking when creating the archive?
MC: I think that's a very valid debate. Black film, Black aestheticism in film, there’s an amorphous kind of quality to it. For the archive, I define Black film as any film that has anything significant to say about the Black experience. And to me, that was a central starting point because these films are in conversation with each other.
It's one of the first times that many people will be engaging with a large swath of Black film history in this way. For instance, if I said only films directed by Black people – Nothing But a Man – this essential film from 1964 would be missing. So there's the way Hollywood maneuvers means that what people would even consider a Black film would be excluded [from the Archive]. I think those conversations are something that with this foundation that I've built are able to be had.
Thinking about Black aestheticism between a Black director and a white director, and how they imagine Blackness and how they haven't is on screen often, most obvious to Black people as spectators.
xoNecole: What is something that you've learned in the year since launching the Black Film Archive as a person and as a creator?
MC: This year has really taught me that you cannot take trust for granted. You cannot take community care for granted. And also I've really learned how precious it is to be changing the public dialogue around what Black film is. That's a very precious gift that I have in my hands. I do not want to do wrong by the films, the filmmakers, the actors, and the audience. I think the other thing that I've really come to focus on and I saw this really early on, but it really is quite special to be changing how Black films are seen. To change and transform collective memory around Black film.
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Beyond Burnout: Nicole Walters' Blueprint For Achieving Career Success On Your Own Terms
Nicole Walters has always been known for two things: her ambition and her ability to recognize when life’s challenges can also double as an inspiring, lucrative brand.
This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
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“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
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Truth is: optimizing our mornings isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially if being a “morning person” doesn’t come as second nature. While being a part of the coveted "5 a.m. Club" may be an aspiration for many, it can feel unfeasible depending on our lifestyle and routines.
As the new year takes off, the desire to make the most of our day is palpable. Our collective allure of 10-step morning routines and productivity hacks can make forming a solid routine feel daunting. And with the added pressure to hit an immediate stride with our new year practices, it’s easy to fall into the trap of creating false momentum that can fade as the year progresses.
Lucky for us, building the calm morning routine of rising before the sun and resisting the urge to get just ten more minutes of sleep can start with one small habit at a time. And you don’t necessarily have to be a “morning person” to make the most out of your day.
That’s why it’s important to choose habits that not only fit your lifestyle but can be sustained and built upon over time. In fact, all it takes is a little bit of planning, small goals, and consistency to stay committed to your goals in the new year. To help, we’re sharing the top morning micro habits to add to your daily routine and set the foundation you need to embrace calm in your mornings.
Micro Habits, Major Peace: Crafting Your Ideal Morning Routine
1. If You Want a Distraction-Free Morning, Try: The No-Phone Rule
Let’s be honest, sometimes our phones get the better part of our morning before we ever get a chance to roll out of bed. With that in mind, it may be time to adopt a new habit that deprioritizes your screen time and allows you to stop the mindless scrolling before it starts. Social media and work emails all have a way of sucking us into a time-draining rabbit hole that’s hard to get out of. But when we create the micro habit (read: boundary) with our media consumption and personal time, we can make space for a more mindful morning.
2. If You Want To Be More Organized, Try: Making Your Bed
Making your bed in the morning may seem like a small thing to look over, but there are great benefits to marking this task off. Bed-making in the morning is often associated with a sense of order, discipline, and accomplishment. With this habit being small and within your control, the sense of self-management can create order and structure in your immediate environment. Completing a simple task like making your bed is a quick win, and, with such an accomplishment early in the day, it can set a positive tone and motivate you to tackle more tasks ahead.
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3. If You Want Less Morning Jitters, Try: Hydrating Before Caffeine
We all love making coffee in the morning or stopping by our local coffee shop before heading to work, but when it comes to our overall wellness, we may forget to give our body the hydration it needs at sunrise. Since we tend to go hours without water while we’re sleeping, it’s important to refuel upon waking up to avoid dehydration and fatigue. As a coffee-lover, it feels nice to start the day off with a warm or iced caffeinated treat, but when we sip on a glass of water (with lemon or cucumbers added), it can reduce brain fog and cleanse us from the inside out.
4. If You Want To Be More Health-Conscious, Try: Taking Your Vitamins/Supplements
What we give our bodies on the inside is just as important as how we look on the outside. Prioritizing our vitamin and supplement intake is a great habit to form for the betterment of our overall well-being. When we take our supplements in the morning, we’re creating a routine and commitment to ourselves to replenish our bodies with the minerals and vitamins that we may be deficient in. Taking your vitamins every day at the same time also allows you to create a system that you can rely on and create a sense of predictability for the tasks to follow within your morning routine.
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5. If You Want To Be More Mindful, Try: Setting Your Intentions
No matter how far we get into a digital, AI-focused world, nothing beats the power of putting pen to paper. Taking a moment to pause before the noise of the world creeps in allows us to approach the day with a preview of the goals and aims we hope to see come about. Sometimes, it’s hard to wrap our heads around all the responsibilities that beg for our attention, but when we set smaller, achievable intentions, we can set our own pace and raise our awareness of what matters the most that day — and what can wait until tomorrow.
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