Med Hondo and the Business Conditions of African Cinema

On June 9, 2026, the Criterion Collection releases Med Hondo's "West Indies: Les nègres marrons de la liberté" (West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty, 1979) on Blu-ray — a 4K restoration of one of the most crucial and least-seen films in the history of African cinema, paired with a new interview with scholar Aboubakar Sanogo and archival interviews with Hondo himself. The film is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. This disc release gives it a physical form you can buy and add to your collection.

That Criterion announcement, which I received a couple of days ago, is what started this exercise.