EXCLUSIVE: Janus Films has struck a new 4K restoration of Jessie Maple‘s groundbreaking debut feature, Will, and will begin a theatrical run for the film next month in New York.
Theatrical screenings of Will are set to begin on June 13 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. This release from Janus marks the first official theatrical run for Maple’s Will, which was first seen by limited audiences in 1981.
Shot on location in Harlem with a budget of $12,000, Will stars Obaka Adedunyo as a former All-American basketball star who has fallen from grace due to drugs. With the support of his wife (Loretta Devine, making her screen debut), Will (Adedunyo) finds a renewed sense of purpose in the community while mentoring a streetwise 12-year-old (Robert Dean) and coaching a local young women’s basketball team.
A landmark of independent American cinema, Will was among the first independent features directed by a Black American woman. Maple, who honed her craft first working on news coverage for CBS and NBC, and was one of the first Black women to join the cinematographers union in New York, died in 2023 at age 86.
The Will 4K restoration has received limited screenings at MoMA in New York, the Los Angeles Festival of Movies, and was recently given an international premiere at the BFI in London through the buzzy Black Debutantes series programmed by curator Rógan Graham.
Selected for preservation by the Library of Congress, the Will 4K restoration was made from the 16mm camera negative and magnetic sound elements by the Black Film Center & Archive (BFCA) at Indiana University, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Center for African American Media Arts.
