For Michael J. Dennis, the quest to restore “Riverbend” started with a simple goal: Keep the long-lost relic of Black cinema from ever disappearing again.

Weeks ago, he succeeded. At the Aug. 15 Atlanta premiere of “Riverbend” at the Plaza Theatre, Reelblack Renaissance released the 6k film restoration on Blu-ray — it’s now available for sale online and to rent at Videodrome.

Getting the disc on shelves was anything but simple. Dennis calls it an odyssey, a quest of coincidences. One that began decades earlier.

Released in 1990, “Riverbend” tells the story of three Black Vietnam War soldiers who end up in a rural Georgia town terrorized by Jim Crow-era rule. Together, the soldiers lead the Black residents in an armed uprising for justice and self-determination. Dennis describes it as a blend of post-Blaxploitation, Vietnam Exploitation, action flick and civil rights drama.

Starring stunt performer and actor Steve James, the film was shot in Texas and shown in a small theatrical run. But after that the movie all but disappeared, save a few VHS tapes. “Riverbend” was lost to time.

Until Dennis got involved. He’s a Philadelphia-based filmmaker, promoter and film historian with an interest in preserving Black cinema. According to Dennis, there are few films that show Black characters having “agency.”

“That makes it a dangerous film,” Dennis said. “It makes it a film that after you see it, you kind of understand why it might have been buried for 35 years.”

When he started uploading rare and forgotten Black films onto his YouTube channel Reelblack TV, “Riverbend” was an obvious choice — the channel has about 1.5 million subscribers — to create a new audience.

“I think ‘Riverbend’ is a prime example of a film that really needs to be seen by more people, because if left to Hollywood, you would think that Black people are not intelligent, they can’t self-organize, and that you need a white ally in order to get anything,” Dennis said. “This is a movie that says exactly the opposite.”

After he uploaded the film, he got an email from the director Sam Firstenberg. It said thank you. And it sparked an idea in Dennis: Why not try to restore the film and bring it back for real?

There was one major issue: He didn’t have a copy of the film, and they were notoriously hard to find.

Until 2021, when a South African 35 mm print appeared on eBay. This began the so-called “grindhouse restoration” of “Riverbend.” The film was in rough shape — scratched, spliced, skipping and missing 10 whole minutes — like it had “been run through every grindhouse projector between New York and Johannesburg.”

Dennis reached out to preservationist Craig Rogers of Deaf Crocodile, who restored the footage and spliced in VHS tapes to fill in the missing scenes.

They played the finished “grindhouse’ cut at the Denton Black Film Festival in Texas in 2024 with the director, cast and crew in attendance. Dennis thought that would be the end of it. Then Dennis Doros of Milestone Films chimed in to help.

“I thought it was a spiritual journey we were on,” Dennis said. “Because every time we thought we ran out of runway, something would happen and it would extend.”

Doros helped Dennis locate the original negative at FotoKem in Los Angeles, and Austin Squitieri of Reel Revival undertook a restoration using a 6k scan of the surviving interpositive under the supervision of the director. Dennis even raised about $20,000 through a Kickstarter to fund the restoration.

It turned “Riverbend” from a spliced-together repair into a “fully realized work,” with stability, grain rendering, color depth and restored sound. It was ready for an audience, with Dennis as its “guardian.”

He started touring the film at local theaters, with a stop in Atlanta during the BronzeLens Film Festival. He partnered with video rental store Videodrome for the Aug. 15 screening. For owner Matt Booth, “Riverbend” and Reelblack made for a natural partnership.

“These are the kind of events we live for,” Booth said. “A long lost film brought back to life by a passionate cinephile and screened for a sold-out crowd.”

At the screening, Dennis launched the Blu-ray. He also invited co-producer Valerie Vance, an Atlanta resident, to see the restored version for the first time. (She had been in the hospital the day before the screening, but still made it out.) Dennis said she had her moment – she even signed autographs after the film.

“I couldn’t have imagined a better place to launch the Blu-ray than the Plaza,” he said.

Still, Dennis thought showing the film at festivals could be the end of it. But then he thought about preserving the film in the long-term: making it physical. He didn’t want “Riverbend” to live on a streaming service, where the site could pull it off a platform and the movie could disappear again. 

“We want to dispel the myth that Black movies aren’t livable in physical media,” Dennis said. 

Through his company Reelblack Renaissance, Dennis released the film on Blu-ray with a slipcover, four and a half hours of special features, two commentary tracks, an essay booklet and a half-hour featurette about star Steve James’ legacy. 

“Michael’s ‘Riverbend’ Blu-ray release is an impressive achievement,” Booth said. “It’s never easy for a new label to get every detail right with its first title, but (Dennis) has absolutely knocked this one out of the park.” 

Booth said the Blu-rays are already selling well at the store, and he’s going to carry copies for rental and sale for “years to come.” 

For Dennis, “Riverbend” has been a crash-course in a new business: rescuing, restoring and reissuing lost classics. He hopes to do a few rereleases a year, and add more copies of “Riverbend.” 

“I may not financially be able to rescue, restore and reissue every lost gem of Black cinema, but I would love to be a part of it,” Dennis said. 

The “Riverbend” Blu-ray is available for sale online and at Videodrome. 

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