An article in the 15 Aug 1928 New York Amsterdam News announced that Absent, the first production of Rosebud Film Corp., based in Hollywood, CA, had recently finished shooting. A news item in the same paper by the Associated Negro Press mistakenly claimed that the film was owned and controlled by the Lincoln Motion Picture Co., likely because director Harry A. Gant and star Clarence Brooks had previously been associated with Lincoln. The film marked a return to motion pictures for Brooks, whose last picture had been Lincoln’s 1921 release, By Right of Birth (see entry).
       A 20 Aug 1928 preview screening in Los Angeles, CA, was followed by the world premiere of the film in Los Angeles, on 28 Aug 1928, as noted in the next day’s New York Amsterdam News. Rosebud’s newly hired east coast representative, James Smith, was said to be rushing a print of the film to New York, to be screened for exhibitors that week. The following month, a 6 Oct 1928 Pittsburgh Courier item reported that the Starr-Scales Amusement Enterprises circuit had secured distribution for theaters in the North Carolina cities of High Point, Reidsville, and Winston-Salem; and on 15 May 1929, the New York Amsterdam News stated that the film would be taken through colored theaters in the South by Nathan Curry.
       M. T. Potter was identified as head of Rosebud Film Corp. in the New York Amsterdam News; however, items in the 18 Aug 1928 Pittsburgh Courier and 29 Aug 1928 New York Amsterdam News referred to him as F. M. Potter. In Larry Richards’s 1998 book, African American Films Through 1959, Ira McGowan and D.I. Thomas were listed as the film’s distributors.