Of the Black directors that have made the Criterion cut, four are from America (Charles Burnett, William Greaves, Spike Lee, who has two films, and Oscar Micheaux) and four are from outside the U.S. (Steve McQueen, Djibril Diop Mambety, Ousmane Sembene, Euzhan Palcy).
`There's nothing I can say about it that will make it OK,` Becker said about the lack of Black directors in the Criterion Collection. `The fact that things are missing, and specifically that Black voices are missing, is harmful, and that's clear. We have to fix that.`
Ava DuVernay also said that by mostly shutting Black directors out of the Criterion Collection, the company has contributed to `cinema segregation in the art-house circuit.` The filmmaker added, `There are all these gates that are closed to Black filmmakers. It's a minimizing of the Black film canon. But also it's a minimizing of the audience, to think that they wouldn't be interested in Haile Gerima's 'Sankofa,' or 'Ashes and Embers,' or would not want to see all the work of Julie Dash.`
