Michelle Materre, a distributor and educator who promoted black women’s voices in film and released influential independent films by black creators, died March 11 in White Plains, NY. She was 67.
A friend, Kathryn Bowser, said the cause was oral cancer.
Ms. Materre was an early proponent of independently released works by black female directors, beginning at a time when diversity in independent film was far from the forefront of the cultural conversation.
Her company, KJM3 Entertainment Group, worked on the distribution of major films; one of the first projects was the marketing of Julie Dash’s ‘Daughters of the Dust’. Inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2004, “Daughters of the Dust” was widely regarded as a masterpiece of independent black cinema and reportedly became the first feature film by a black woman to have wide release.
DailyExpertNews critic AO Scott wrote in 2020 that “Daughters of the Dust,” which tells the story of Gullah women off the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia in the early 20th century, has “ripples of influence through the culture,” inspired the imagery in Beyoncé’s visual album “Lemonade” and director Sofia Coppola’s aesthetic. Ava DuVernay, the director of “Selma,” also frequently cites the film as an influence.
In memory of the International Documentary Association, Ms Dash wrote: “We are eternally grateful to Michelle and team KJM3 for the first run of ‘Daughters of the Dust’ in 1992; without them it would not have been a success.”
KJM3 Entertainment was founded in 1992 and released 23 films before shutting down in 2001. Another of the company’s most influential distribution efforts was “L’Homme Sur Les Quais” (“The Man by the Shore”) (1993), a drama Raoul Peck, the Haitian author who wrote “I Am Not Your Negro.” directed the 2016 documentary about race in America, based on the writings of James Baldwin.
Ms. Materre’s passion to bring unsung masterpieces to a wider audience brought her career to life. In 1999 she started Creatively Speaking, an attempt to bundle short films by underrepresented filmmakers into thematically organized full-length programmes. It has become a major cultural player, with regular screenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and educational panels on diversity in filmmaking at the New School and elsewhere.
“One Way or Another: Black Women’s Cinema, 1970-1991”, which merged short films into a longer project, was a critically acclaimed Creatively Speaking project. In 2017, Richard Brody of The New Yorker named it the most important repertory series of the year.
In a 2019 interview for the New School, Ms. Materre said she started Creatively Speaking because she saw a lack of opportunity – a theme throughout her career.
“I found that there weren’t many outlets for colored filmmakers and female filmmakers who hadn’t yet reached the opportunity to make feature films,” she said. “They made short films – all these great short films, but no one has ever seen them.”
Once she started producing these films, she added, “people came to them like crazy.”
In the tribute to the International Documentary Association, Leslie Fields-Cruz, the executive director of Black Public Media, wrote that Ms. Materre “understood why black films need special attention when it comes to distribution and engagement.”
“There are multiple generations of filmmakers, curators, distributors and administrators of media art,” she wrote, “whose lives and careers have been impacted simply because Michelle took the time to listen and care.”
Michelle Angelina Materre was born on May 12, 1954 in Chicago. Her father, Oscar Materre, was a Chicago firefighter and owned a paint business. Her mother, Eloise (Michael) Materre, was a real estate agent.
She grew up in Chicago and attended the Chicago Latin School. She then earned a BS in education from Boston State College and a master’s degree in educational media from Boston College.
In 1975, she married Jose Masso, a public school teacher in Boston. They divorced in 1977. She married Dennis Burroughs, a production engineer, in 1990; That marriage also ended in divorce. She is survived by her sisters, Paula and Judi Materre.
Ms. Materre’s work at Creatively Speaking was centered in New York City; In addition to distributing films, she often hosted panels and screenings of little-seen works such as “Charcoal” (2017), Haitian director Francesca Andre’s short film about colorism and skin lightening practices in the black community.
Ms. Materre has advised on the production and distribution of numerous films and has served on the board of the Black Documentary Collective, New York Women in Film and Television, and other groups promoting underrepresented filmmakers.
In 2020, she began teaching at the New School in New York City, where her courses focused on diversity and inclusion in the media.
In memory of The New School Free Press, Ms. Materre’s colleague Terri Bowles, with whom she taught a course at the New School, wrote: “She radiated a love of media and film, immersing her students, colleagues and friends in the vernacular of the vernacular. the image, the countless presentations and its crucial importance.”