This article explores the seminal films of two black filmmakers of different generations: Haile Gerima’s SANKOFA (BF 1993) and Ava DuVernay’s SELMA (FR/UK/US 2014). It suggests that in creating SELMA, DuVernay uses time travel and “bodily epistemology” (Lisa Woolfork) as first deployed by Haile Gerima in his 1993 film to offer 21st century viewers glimpses of the African American slave past. DuVernay’s regressions in time are particularly bound up with those of Gerima in her film’s most talked about scene: “Bloody Sunday”. Several critics denounced the grotesque violence of “Bloody Sunday”, failing to recognize that DuVernay crafts the episode to evoke the past in a new way. Her innovative way of transcending the art of the time-travel narrative is influenced by several of her predecessors, including Gerima.