Eve's Bayou

CTL-E-6260 · Work · film · 1997; National Film Registry 2018

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07451 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6260.

Eve's Bayou is a 1997 American film written and directed by Kasi Lemmons, her feature directorial debut. It was among the first films to showcase the beauty of African American Southern culture, in the account given by the Sundance Institute. Samuel L. Jackson, who starred in the film, also made his debut as a film producer on the picture, and the film helped launch the careers of actresses Meagan Good and Jurnee Smollett. It received the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, and the National Board of Review gave Lemmons a special award for a first-time director. In 2018 the film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, ensuring its preservation as a work of cultural, historic, and aesthetic importance to the nation's film heritage. Lemmons, who teaches in the Graduate Film Department at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, said in a statement carried by the university that, as a Black woman filmmaker, the Library of Congress recognition of the film's diversity of culture, perspective, and expression was particularly meaningful to her and to future generations of filmmakers.

The record

• Also known as: Eve's Bayou (1997)

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 7 — 747 Program, FINAL Wave 13; seventh Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): Gate A CLEAR (hand-checked 2026-10-16): no Eve's Bayou entity or alias in the live graph (3,910 entities), and NO Kasi Lemmons Person entity exists in the graph — the authored_by edge is therefore blocked and documented in the packet's blocked list. ID CTL-E-6260 free at staging. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger — Tier 4 corpus scan tail, corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked #2804. The scan supplied the name string only; every fact is sourced under CTL-GOV-004. SCOPE GATE: A Black woman filmmaker's debut feature about Black Southern life, preserved in the National Film Registry — a canonical Black cinema work. Vital status: WORK — not applicable as a life status; the film (1997) was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2018 (NYU Tisch and Sundance Institute, both accessed 2026-10-16). STATISTICS — Dates and reception (accessed 2026-10-16): released 1997 as Lemmons' directorial debut; National Film Registry class of 2018, one of 25 films announced that year (NYU Tisch). Awards in the opened sources: Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and a National Board of Review special first-time director award (Sundance Institute). Plot detail was deliberately kept general in the description because the detailed plot sources returned in research were not opened at page level in this batch. MEDIA: photo HELD (named candidate only; no license claimed — PHOTO-001 verification deferred); chart staged in media_specs; video HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by name and variants, 2026-10-16); no near-miss title found.); audio HELD (HELD: No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio exists at staging.); map N/A (person/work/event record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Work records carry no map slot.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (Created for this packet (CTL graphic, CTL-PHOTO-001 lane) from the record's sourced facts.) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by nam) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged; audio slot held pending a CTL-PHOTO-001-consistent rights basi)

Relationships

• Kasi Lemmons — authored by
  Eve's Bayou's own staged record (CTL-E-6260, Scan Tail Wave 7) credits the film as 'written and directed by Kasi Lemmons, her feature directorial debut,' and The HistoryMakers' biographical note likewise records Eve's Bayou (1997) as Lemmons's writing and directorial debut. Closes the blocked edge documented in Scan Tail Wave 7, which recorded that no Kasi Lemmons Person entity existed. Lemmons is the film's sole credited screenwriter in the opened sources; the schema has no director predicate (see the packet's blocked list, Gate D).

Sources

• New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Eve's Bayou & Brokeback Mountain Inducted Into National Film Registry (accessed 2026-10-16) — the Library of Congress announced Eve's Bayou among the 25 films added to the National Film Registry that year; the film is Professor Kasi Lemmons' directorial debut; registry films are chosen for cultural, historic and aesthetic importance and addition ensures preservation; Lemmons' statement on the meaning of the selection for a Black woman filmmaker — https://tisch.nyu.edu/grad-film/news/2018/-eve-s-bayou--inducted-into-national-film-registry (primary source · build store)
• Sundance Institute (Sundance Collab), Kasi Lemmons (accessed 2026-10-16) — Lemmons' acclaimed 1997 feature directorial debut Eve's Bayou, inducted into the National Film Registry; among the first to showcase African American Southern culture; Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature; National Board of Review special first-time director award; Samuel L. Jackson's debut as a film producer; helped launch the careers of Meagan Good and Jurnee Smollett — https://collab.sundance.org/people/Kasi-Lemmons-1523989060 (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6260 · Combined Graph record U-07451 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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