EVE’S BAYOU, the feature directorial debut from actress Kasi Lemmons, had a $6M budget and an entirely black cast. There are zero white people in this film – not even wandering by in the background – which seems like a pretty amazing feat for 1997 and an unknown director. At the time (and unfortunately for many years to come), conventional wisdom was that dramas strictly about black people simply couldn’t bring in audiences, but EVE’S BAYOU made almost $15M worldwide – more than double its budget – and is a critically loved film that people still talk about today. It’s number 99 on the highest grossing films of 1997, which may sound like a little number, but let’s put that in context. It came out the same year as TITANIC. And MEN IN BLACK. And GROSSE POINTE BLANK. Ok GROSSE POINTE BLANK didn’t do Titanic numbers (nobody did) but it’s a great movie and I’m not going to just skip over it.