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Director Sam Firstenberg and film restoration pioneer Michael J. Dennis stopped by the Texas Standard studio this week to talk about the movie “Riverbend.”
This is an extended version of the interview that aired on Texas Standard.
The full transcript of this episode of Texas Standard is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Laura Rice: Hi there, Laura Rice here with a Texas Extra. It’s been a while since we’ve brought you extended and special content for our podcast and digital audiences, but I think you’ll find this conversation worth the wait. Director Sam Furstenberg and Film Restoration Pioneer. Michael J. Dennis joined me in the studio this week to talk about the movie Riverbend.
As usual, I included as much of the conversation as I could on air, but there’s always good stuff left out, and in this case, a whole second wave of an interview that came about based on the question of someone listening in the control booth. So you’ll hear me thank our guests and then get back into it.
Hope you enjoy. It is the Texas Standard. I’m Laura Rice Sinners is nominated for a record 16 Academy Awards, but long before Michael B. Jordan took on the dual role fighting racist vampires in the south, there was another story of black resistance filmed right here in Texas. Riverbend was produced in.
1989, and though the story is set in Georgia, it was shot in East Texas around Waxahatchee. Despite some early recognition, the film was largely lost to history until it caught the attention of a man committed to restoring films, featuring black stories. Now Riverbend is again available to audiences. This time in six K, and it’s showing this weekend at the Austin Film Society Theater Director Sam Furstenberg is in the Texas Standard Studio with me.
Sam, welcome to the Texas Standard.
Sam Furstenberg: Hey, thank you for having me, and I’m happy to be here with you.
Laura Rice: I also have with me Michael J. Dennis, the man behind real black Renaissance and the restoration of Riverbend. Michael, thanks to you.
Michael J. Dennis: Hey, thank you, Laura. It’s great to be here in Texas.
Laura Rice: Absolutely. I wanna start, Michael, with you and how this film first caught your attention.
Michael J. Dennis: Well, it, it goes all the way back to my days at video library. I was a buyer at a video store back in the eighties, and I never watched it Then. But then there’s a gentleman named Charles Woods, who’s a mentor of mine, my podcast co-host, and he had five copies in his collection of Riverbend on VHS. Hmm.
And I asked him like, why do you have so many? He said, you have to watch this movie. It’s, it’s unlike any other film that you’ll see. You know? Long story short, I ended up putting it on my YouTube channel right before the pandemic, and that was in 2019. Fast forward to 2021, Sam Furstenberg sends me an email.
And I’m saying, oh, this is gonna be a cease and desist. Yeah. He says, no. He said, no. Thank you for putting this up, sharing this movie with the public because it was independently produced and it’s considered an orphan film. Right. So we start talking and all these magical things started to happen, right, Sam?
Sam Furstenberg: Oh, correct. Absolutely. Magical is the right word.
Laura Rice: Sam, tell me a little bit about the, the synopsis. Uh, Michael said, you know, this, this was a special film. What, what makes it special?
Sam Furstenberg: This is a story about. Racial injustice in the segregated south in the 1960s during the height of, uh, the civil right movement.
But the different, the unique thing about this movie that in this movie, it’s not about movie, like all the other, the rest of Hollywood movies where the white hero comes to save the black. Problem or to resolve the black problem, but rather the black population of a small town, which is called River Bend in the South, they’re resolving and solving the problem, the racial problem that they are, uh, facing by themself.
Uh, uh,
Michael J. Dennis: self reliance. Yeah.
Sam Furstenberg: Reliance.
Michael J. Dennis: I mean this movie and the spooks of the door. The only two movies in film history that show this, this sort of agency.
Laura Rice: Yeah.
Michael J. Dennis: Was among black characters.
Laura Rice: Well, Sam, tell me about the initial reception. This is, you know, I’m, I, I note this is sort of after the black exploitation movement, right?
What, what, what did it was received like in the, in the late eighties, early nineties.
Sam Furstenberg: Uh, so you have mentioned that this was, uh, privately financed. Mm-hmm. The movie was privately financed. So right away, it’s not a Hollywood corporation type of a movie, and it was made in Texas, in the Waxahatchee area with the Texan money.
The, the investment was locally when the movie was finished, when we finished the filming, when we finished the editing, the producers, the local producers sold it to a company in Hollywood. It was a small, independent, uh, uh, distribution company, which somehow managed to give it to a bigger company.
Paramount Video and the Paramount video came out with, with the movie. From my understanding with, with very few copies of the movie for a rental shop. Mm-hmm. At the time, in the 1990s, whoever remember there were, there was a rental shop in every corner of every block. And uh, but this was a limited number of, of, uh, of the VHS cassette that came out.
I understand. There were few screening in the East Coast. There was none in the West Coast. I never heard about any, therefore, because it was such a limited distribution. I don’t remember reading any, any reviews at the time or any critics at the time. So we really don’t know, you know, we don’t know how it was accepted except one thing that we know that, uh, that it was different for the time.
For the 1990s, very different. And I remember one review in either Variety or Hollywood Reporter, that’s the only one I ever read. And, and they mentioned how radical, how radical the idea is, how, how difficult, uh, the movie came on the heels of, uh, Mississippi Burning, if I’m not wrong, right?
Michael J. Dennis: Or came out and.
It was released in 1989, home Video in 1990. So you have to realize that this is Mississippi Burnings 1988. So this was sold by Samuel and Valerie Vance as the answer to Mississippi Burning, and it should have really been part of the conversation of 1989, which is Do the Right Thing driving Miss Daisy.
That’s what was happening in the zeitgeist. And this is a movie that was set in 1966, made in 1989, and it’s still relevant today. Because it’s dealing with issues that we’re still confronted with, um, in America,
Sam Furstenberg: but in a
Michael J. Dennis: provocative D pro. Provocative and radical way.
Sam Furstenberg: Yeah. And
Michael J. Dennis: that’s
Sam Furstenberg: why. I dunno how, how really, how audiences reacted because it wasn’t widely enough, uh, release
Michael J. Dennis: for us.
I mean, it was sold. I mean, the reason I didn’t watch a video library immediately was because it was sold as a straight to video action film, and there were literally. Restrict to video action movies coming out every week. Mm. So this kind of got lost in the shuffle for me personally, you know, but again, Charles Woods and a lot of fans of Steve James, um, and Margaret Avery Latch onto it.
Right.
Sam Furstenberg: But that took some time. The this to, to get traction for this movie, to get traction. It took time. Yeah. The collector among the people who understood, among the people
Michael J. Dennis: we knew. Yeah. Well, for a long time it was the only film of Steve James is that people couldn’t get
Laura Rice: Yeah.
Michael J. Dennis: On DVD or Blu-ray. So, and, and we’re, and we’re working to correct that now with this release and our premiere.
Laura Rice: Well, I wanna, I wanna talk for a minute just about how. Challenging it was to, to find a version that you could restore. I mean, this was on VHS tapes everywhere, but it is the Wikipedia page. True. I mean, is this, is this real a 35 millimeter found in, in South Africa? Is that right?
Michael J. Dennis: Yeah. Sam and I, we started talking, like I said, he, he, he, I thought it was gonna be cease and desist.
We start talking and this magical thing happened. A print, the 35 millimeter print shows up on eBay while we’re having conversations. So I, I said, well, let me bid on it and see, you know, ’cause it, it seemed like it’d be incredibly rare, like it might be the only print. That exists outside of the Library of Congress.
So I won the print. We went about restoring that print, and then we found out it was missing seven minutes.
Laura Rice: Mm.
Michael J. Dennis: So that’s when Valerie Vance comes into our life. The producer? Yeah, the producer widow of Samuel Vance, the writer and and co-producer of the film along with Troy and Regina to jail. We have to give everybody their fair share of credit and she said, I have a print.
Laura Rice: Wow.
Michael J. Dennis: No, she’s not print. It was, oh no, she had a mold issue. She had a mold issue, so we’re back to square one. But she, what she was able to do when we ran into Dennis Doro at missing movies, he was able to. Locate the negative of the film, and that’s where we are able to do a six k restoration of the film with the help of real revival Austin Squier, uh, who’s based outta Pennsylvania.
So it looks better than ever, right? Yeah.
Sam Furstenberg: Yeah. And, and again, because it’s a privately financed for a small company, we would not imagine that the, even the negative exists somewhere. Usually if it’s a big company, if you deal with 20th century folks, universal, everything is organized. You know, everything is.
But when you deal with a privately, small, tiny company and, and they sold it to a company that went bankrupt. Mm-hmm. So where, where is the negative, where are the elements? So there was a lot of detective work. It wasn’t, yeah, we’re looking at easy, like Michael describes
Michael J. Dennis: looking, the labs were all done in Texas and those labs are all long gone, absorbed by video labels and so on and so forth.
So we literally thought they, they just scuttled the whole thing. And then again, missing movies.org located. The negative for us, and, and we were able to work out a deal to bring it back to audiences. Uh, yeah.
Laura Rice: Sam, I, I wanna take you back to, you know, 1988, Texas. What was it like being in that community, trying to tell this story?
Yeah.
Sam Furstenberg: Well, I’m telling it again and again to everybody. We were in, in the wax area. We stayed in DeSoto, Texas. That’s where was our base, the shooting most of the movies in Venice, Texas. Mm-hmm. Which is in this area. And I must stretch the point that I have a little bit advantage here by being a foreigner, somebody who didn’t grow in a high school and uh, uh, didn’t go to elementary American school or high school.
So I was able to. Kind of watch it and there was no racial tension. Hmm. I must, I must say so maybe some underneath current that I didn’t feel, but not at all. The, the, the little town was so helpful to us. As you know, most of the cast of the movies black there, there are very few white actors and the crew.
Like 90%, 95% white persons and very few black people in the technical crew. But I, I never felt any tension whatsoever here, here in Texas. So, and, and we are at the end of the eighties, so I, I, I must say it was harmonious work and we really worked very nice. A lot of, uh, fun on the set. A lot of joking and laughing.
It was a, it was. Pretty happy, uh, set, pretty happy production, I must say. So
Laura Rice: I’m so glad to hear that. You know, I want you to brag just a little bit about your cast. Um, we’ve mentioned Steve James, who, you know, tragically died not too long after this film. And, and Margaret Avery, who was just off of her academy, uh, award nominated performance in the Color purple, uh, Julius Tendon, who’s actually a, a, a Texan himself
Sam Furstenberg: from here.
From Austin.
Laura Rice: Yeah. What, what was. What was that like having that cast?
Sam Furstenberg: So, uh, we brought only two people from outside. Steve James and Margaret Avery. Steve James at this point, uh, was kind of in the action realm. He was kind of a star already. Mm-hmm. After American Engine number one, American Engine number two, Delta Force, Margaret Avery, big star.
Mm-hmm. You know, academy nominated, but all the rest, everybody, all the rest of the cast is locally here from. Texas, uh, including Julius Tynan, including, uh, Alex, including, uh, Tony Frank, including tj, uh, uh, uh, Kennedy and many, many others. Vanessa Tate, many of them, Vanessa Tate, many of them were, uh, theater, theater actors.
Mm-hmm. Many of them were doing commercial. Very little, uh, television, very little experience in, in features. But it’s nice when you come to a place which is not Hollywood and you can get the best of the cast of the local cast. So some of the performances in this movies are unbelievable. Tony Frank, which.
Plays the villain, the sheriff villain. He’s such an actor. Unbelievable. Julius Tynan is fantastic. So we really, we got the best of the best of the crew that we could assemble here in Texas. And by the way, this was the request of the, of the financier. Mm-hmm. Troy Ade that put the money, he insisted that we will use as many.
People as we can cast and crew Texans. Mm-hmm. So very few, very few people who came from the outside.
Michael J. Dennis: Yeah. Texas was a big market for independent filmmaking at that time. Uh, you know, best Little whorehouse in Texas. Mm-hmm. Lone Star Walker, Texas Ranger. Right. I mean, I, you know, I don’t have to preach to the choir, but.
But, um, when you talked to Alex, Alex Morris, he said that this was the biggest production for black, uh, actors to ever come to the town. And it was a privilege to be a part of that cast.
Laura Rice: That, that’s amazing. You know, I wanna ask, and I don’t know who to direct this to, I noticed, um, watching the restored version, there’s a warning at the beginning about violence and, and racial slurs.
Is that, is that an, is that a new addition? Would that have been there in, in 1989
Sam Furstenberg: I insisted this Yeah. Michael wasn’t so much with me in this. Yeah. But, uh, you know, to be authentic. There is a writer, of course, you know, I’m the director, but I did not write the script. There is a writer, Sam Van, and, and, uh, and he reflect, and the movie takes place in the sixties mm-hmm.
In the, in the deep south, segregated. So all of us. Especially the writer, and he was the producer. They insisted, Oliver insisted that, uh, the, obviously the language was much rougher back then in the, probably in the sixties. And to stay authentic to the location and to the time, we have to use the language that was used back then.
And who knew it better than the writer, Sam Vance. He was, uh, he grew up in Atlanta. He was a little kid in Atlanta. He grew up in the sun, so he knew it. So he insisted. Nowadays, you know, we’re so many years away from the sixties, so we need to kind of make it little bit softer and warn the audience that, uh, that the language is pretty harsh when it comes to, uh, racial references.
And, uh, so,
Michael J. Dennis: but, but we also have to warn people that this is a fun movie.
Laura Rice: Yeah.
Michael J. Dennis: Like it’s, it’s very entertaining. Sam is an, he’s, uh, he doesn’t talk much about his career in terms of being an action Artur, but, you know, it’s, it’s a under he it is a handful of people, right?
Laura Rice: Yeah.
Michael J. Dennis: That are experts. And he was a, a stalwart for the Canon group.
You know, so if you like movies like Missing in Action, he didn’t, he didn’t do Missing In Action or Chuck Norris movies. Um. Steve James movies, Michael Doff, the, you know, you’re gonna get a lot of that in addition to what we’re talking about in terms of the subversive nature of the story.
Laura Rice: Mm. You know, another thing I, I, I did notice as a, as a Texan and, and you know, again, the story set in Georgia, you mentioned that’s the writer where, where he’s from, but, uh, blue Bonnets, I saw some blue bonnets in there.
Right. Uh, do you remember? I remember, I remember very, I, I noticed. Yes. On the, on the grave. I won’t spoil anything, but No,
Sam Furstenberg: no.
Laura Rice: Yes.
Sam Furstenberg: The, the, of course the art department crew, the art department, their, their job was to make sure that it’ll look south. Mm-hmm. That it’ll look like the south. So whatever they did, you know, our department, they don’t, they don’t have to consult with the director on every little tiny details.
In general, the, of course questions come up and, uh, our department talks with the, or the, especially the production designer, but they know what they’re doing. Their job was to take this little town of Venice and make it look like deep south like Georgia. Mm-hmm. Like, uh, so they did what they had to do.
Mm-hmm. Probably some
Laura Rice: few things that I, well text they’ll appreciate that they didn’t even ask me
Sam Furstenberg: and
Laura Rice: I didn’t,
Sam Furstenberg: I didn’t know about.
Laura Rice: Well, what else do you want, um, audiences to know, I guess, uh, Michael, about your work and, and what you’re trying to do and in choosing films like River Bend and, and bringing them back to audiences?
Michael J. Dennis: Well, I mean, our mission is to. Reclaim a lot of these lost films. So in addition to Riverbend, we have another movie I can’t announce just yet. Um, but once we clear our Kickstarter goal, um, I, I will, we’ll start working on the next project, but there’s literally. Dozens, wouldn’t you say, Sam?
Sam Furstenberg: Yeah,
Michael J. Dennis: yeah, absolutely.
Of black independent films that are just in danger of being lost at time. So our mission statement is to reclaim and restore those films, and you can find out more about that@realblack.com or riverbend restored.com.
Sam Furstenberg: Don’t let Michaels be so humble. Michael runs uh, uh, YouTube channel, which is called Real Blake, with one and a half million followers.
That’s quite a number. And his, his, uh, mission in life, if I’m correct, is to find, to restore, to recover, uh, black cinema in general because there are a lot of. A a as well as other movies, but one chunk of it is lost Black movies, which are either we call, we call them lost movies, or Orhan movies. Or movies who have been neglected through the years because companies are going out of, uh, out of business bankruptcy and many movies are there to, to find and to restore.
Yeah,
Michael J. Dennis: I mean that’s, that’s a key point. Your mission is
Sam Furstenberg: life, Michael, isn’t
Michael J. Dennis: it? That’s a key point. Now you got me on my soapbox. Now, Sam, you know, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t have. Started this one. We we’re in overtime now. Right? It’s all right. So I can talk about this. Um, yeah. I mean, when I, when I started the, the YouTube channel in 2006, it was really an outlet for me to do interviews with my peers, you know, other filmmakers that were part of this black and this new black film independent film movement of the early two thousands.
The Ryan Cooglers, the Ava RNAs. Mm-hmm. The people that you, you talk, you talk about Ryan now. We talked, we interviewed him after his first film, you know, so. Uh, Fruitvale Station. So we started off with interviews. Then I noticed that there were a lot of movies that are not making it through the digital divide, and a lot of them are movies, buying about people of color, right?
So I started sharing those on, on that platform, that YouTube channel, real Black tv, and that’s when it took off. It really, and. Now the mission is to try to rescue as many of these films as possible, but I mean, Riverbend has been, it’s been Sam’s baby for decades, and now it’s become something I, I feel very responsible to shepherd through.
Sam Furstenberg: Yeah. Thank you. I, I, it’s a great honor and I, I’m really happy that somebody here came and, and rescued this movie. I don’t think I would’ve done it though, though I really wanted to do it, but I don’t have the energy that Michael Dennis was. Well, when
Michael J. Dennis: you find out all these things, I mean, it’s spiritual also.
I mean, it is just too many coincidences for not to, for, for us not to believe that this movie is meant to come out right now.
Sam Furstenberg: Maybe it was destined that why Michael and me will meet and together we’ll bring River Band back to life. But you know, I, I really want to mention if, if I may, what Michael have said before the movie.
We’re talking about, about a lot, about the message and the underneath. But this is not, it’s not a preachy movie. It’s not a documentary. This is a fun. Semi action movie with drama, with love, story, with betrayal, with the, yeah. Consequences. Yeah. I mean it’s, yeah. Real, real dramatic story. And, uh, with fun, it’s a, it’s a rollercoaster of emotions.
Michael J. Dennis: Great. I mean, on the big screen, you gotta come, we’re gonna be screening in Austin again, as well as Dallas, Texas on April 29th as part of the Alamo Drafthouse Weird Wednesday, uh, event. They embraced us and they’re playing us in five different cities around the country. So, again. Real black.com. Riverbend restored.com.
You’ll find all our dates
Laura Rice: and we will post all of this and Texas standard.org. Michael J. Dennis is the founder of Real Black Renaissance, a boutique label dedicated to reclaiming and restoring overlooked black cinema. Mm-hmm. Sam Furstenberg is a director here of River Bend as we’ve been talking about, Sam and Michael, thank you again.
Michael J. Dennis: Thank
Sam Furstenberg: you. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Lord.
Laura Rice: So this was, uh, a small release in, in 1989, independently produced, but there’s actually, I don’t know if a conspiracy theory is the right word about why it didn’t get more, uh, from the get-go.
Sam Furstenberg: So, there is a mystery here because, uh, the, the movie was first sold to a small company.
Uh, it was called I-R-I-R-C and another company was involved prison film, but it ended up with the hand of very big company, right? Paramount on video. And here comes the question, if it’s at the hand of such a huge, big company, how come it was such a tiny little release? Is there a reason? Is it a commercial reason?
Is it a, uh. Ideological reason or the reason of the time. Yeah. So
Michael J. Dennis: what,
what
Sam Furstenberg: do you
Michael J. Dennis: think Michael? I mean, think about it, Laura. I mean, this movie came out in the big home video boom, right? And it only made it to one pressing two pressings of VHS. It never went to sell through and never made it to cable tv.
Big
Laura Rice: stars. I mean, just look at.
Michael J. Dennis: Yeah. Never the
Laura Rice: picture. I mean,
Michael J. Dennis: never played.
Laura Rice: I picked that up.
Michael J. Dennis: Never played cable, never played DVD, never made it to Blu-ray. It disappeared for 35 years.
Sam Furstenberg: Right. So is reason, so the subject too uncomfortable for general audience to the general American audience, because we know that in some other countries it did pretty well.
In France and in Germany.
Michael J. Dennis: Yeah. Yeah. Did there we have VHS copies of German pressings, French pressings. It was sold in a lot of territories, but it literally disappeared. And that could be contractual, but it could also be a little more conspiratorial.
Sam Furstenberg: Now, one, one of the, one of the theories that there is a practice in Hollywood and in music, not only in uh, not only in film, sometimes companies buy a movie or buy music.
To so-called to suppress it. Right. So it’s so-called to buy and to bury. Yeah. So it’ll not compete with another product. Right. So was this a competition to Mississippi Burning, which comes from the same company, paramount or Ryan? It was the same company. So did they buy it to bury it or they found it not, uh, suitable.
The subject matter and the outcome of the story, which we don’t
Michael J. Dennis: have world to give up. The world, the world will never know, but we’re we’re, but I think it’s perfect timing for it to come back now. I don’t know. I mean, since we’re chatting a little bit, what, what were your thoughts about the movie? Because we’re, it’s still brand new to us.
I mean, does it, does it resonate?
Laura Rice: 2026. I mean, again, I kept comparing to, to sinners just because it, it, there really are so few films of, of that level of, uh, black resistance and I, and I think that the reaction to it, I mean, audiences standing in theaters and to sinners and I could, I could imagine similar things happening with, with this one.
The,
Michael J. Dennis: the audience gets a really didn’t get chance of seeing a black action hero.
Sam Furstenberg: Yeah.
Michael J. Dennis: I mean, and that’s, that was rare. I mean, you had, I mean, Steve James was on the verge of Superstardom in a way. He, he came right before Wesley Snipes and a little bit around the same time as Carl Weathers. Right. But he had his own.
But after
Sam Furstenberg: sched, after, after,
Michael J. Dennis: well after the seventies, after Shaft and all those guys. And yeah, he
Sam Furstenberg: wanted to be Richard Ree.
Laura Rice: There’s something, there’s something else, and I almost mentioned it now. It, it verges on spoiler, but, you know, you mentioned the, um, the white hero and there’s, there’s a moment where this guy, this white guy, sort of raises his hand and, and sort of volunteers to be the white hero.
And then there’s a, the reaction from the actor who says, you are not a bad man, but you’re white right now. And so I need you to. Sit down with them. This,
Michael J. Dennis: that’s Troy Dale, that’s, that’s the producer of the film.
Laura Rice: Is it Who,
Michael J. Dennis: who plays the executive producer of the film? Troy Dale has, has that part as Mr. Cook in the film.
So yeah, I mean, to be clear, for those who are listening, um, it was, the movie was made, it was two couples that came together. A, a black couple, the Vs. And. Uh, the Dales, which was a white couple. And, and so the Dales provided the money the Vs provided the idea And the script. And the script, yes. And the finished script.
Right. So, so that’s Van Dale Productions.
Laura Rice: Wow.
Sam Furstenberg: Yeah. But, uh, we just had a, we are coming from a screening in Philadelphia. A few days ago, and the reaction was tremendous. People are cheering and laughing and, and standing and talking back to the screen. So there is a emotional, uh, resonant with, with audience.
With this movie, that’s what we, we find out
Laura Rice: what a thrill to get the chance to, to see how audiences in a theater react so many years after this.
Sam Furstenberg: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Sam Furstenberg: It’s nothing, it’s not, this is not streaming in the, when you sit at home by yourself and stream the movie. Friend, this is with 150 people.
Every,
Michael J. Dennis: you see something new every time you, you watch it. And I, I get a kick at, just out of watching Sam watch his own movie. Like he’s, he’s, it’s like a watching a kid in a candy store, just like the ’cause that’s why you make the
Sam Furstenberg: movies. Right? That’s why we make movies. I don’t make movies for my pleasure to sit at home and to enjoy the movie that I direct.
And I believe so all the other directors and writers, we make movies so audience will see them, we’ll see them. We are entertainers and that’s our goal.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
