BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20260329T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20261025T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:\"Within Our Gates 1920\" review + Thoughts to Oscar Micheau x from Movies That Move We DTSTAMP:20260311T022118Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:674-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n OSCAR MICHEAUX THEATER\n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/event s/event/677-oscar-devereaux-micheaux-books-plus-films/\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \"Within Our Gates\" from OScar Micheaux\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\ n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n Still from Within Our Gates\, portraying the ly nching of Jasper Landry (William Stark) and his wife (Mattie Edwards)\n\n\ n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n Still from the 1920 Oscar Micheaux film Within Our Gates featuring Grant Gorman and Evelyn Preer\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Tit le\nWithin our gates\nSummary\nSylvia Landry\, a young black woman\, is vi siting her cousin\, Alma Prichard\, in the North. After Alma uses her wick ed step-brother Larry to break Sylvia's engagement\, Sylvia returns to the South. She meets Rev. Jacobs\, a minister who runs a school for black chi ldren\, which is facing closure. Sylvia volunteers to go to Boston to atte mpt to raise funds. Upon arriving\, her purse is stolen\, but a local man\ , Dr. Vivian\, manages to get it back for her. Dr. Vivian falls in love wi th Sylvia\, and gradually learns of her tragic past: her adoptive mother a nd father were both the victims of lynching and she was the victim of atte mpted rape\, after a meeting between her adoptive father\, sharecropper Ja sper Landry\, and the plantation owner\, Philip Girdlestone\, ends with Gi rdlestone dead. Meanwhile\, despite setbacks\, Sylvia has managed to raise $50\,000 for the school from a generous philanthropist. After a second di fficult encounter with Larry\, Sylvia and Dr. Vivian are happily reunited. \nNames\nMicheaux\, Oscar\, 1884-1951\, film director\, film producer\, sc reenwriter\, actor\nPreer\, Evelyn\, actor\nClements\, Flo\, actor\nLucas\ , Charles D.\, actor\nRuffin\, James D.\, actor\nChenault\, Jack\, actor\n Jacks\, S. T. (Samuel True)\, 1887-1955\, actor\nStarks\, William\, 1879-1 937\, actor\nEdwards\, Mattie\, 1866-1944\, actor\nMicheaux Film Corporati on\, production company\nCreated / Published\n1993.\nHeadings\n- African American educators\n- African American schools\n- African American physi cians\n- Hoodlums--United States\n- Educational benefactors--United Stat es\n- Race relations\n- Racism--United States\n- Lynching--United State s\nGenre\nRace films\nSocial problem films\nSilent films\nFeature films\nF iction films\nNotes\n- Originally released in the U.S. in 1920 by the Mic heaux Book and Film Co. and Quality Amusement Corporation\, both under the states rights system.\n- At approximately 46 minutes into the film\, Osc ar Micheaux appears in a cameo as a criminal doing business with the gambl er\, Larry Prichard\, who is Alma's step-brother.\n- LC also holds the Sp anish language version\, entitled La Negra in the AFI/Filmoteca Española Collection and a 1/2 in. viewing copy entitled The African American cinema I : Oscar Micheaux's Within our gates in the LC Collection.\n- Sources u sed: Eagan\, D. America's film legacy\, p. 64-68\; AFI catalog online\, vi ewed March 22\, 2024\; Internet movie database\, March 22\, 2024\; San Fra ncisco Silent Flm Festival WWW site viewed March 22\, 2024 (Within our gat es essay).\n- Evelyn Preer\, Flo Clements\, Charles D. Lucas\, James D. R uffin\, Jack Chenault\, S.T. Jacks\, Mrs. Evelyn\, William Stark\, Mattie Edwards\, Ralph Johnson\, Grant Gorman\, E.G. Tatum\, Grant Edwards\, Jimm ie Cook\, William Smith\, Bernice Ladd\, Oscar Micheaux.\n- Reconstructed in 1993 from a nitrate print of La Negra\, a version with Spanish languag e intertitles. The new English language intertitles are a translation from the Spanish back into English\, with English diction\, slang\, and syntax drawn whenever possible from Oscar Micheaux's novels or from his 1925 fil m\, Body and soul.\n- This film was selected for the National Film Regist ry.\nMedium\n1 video file (digital) (78 min.) : si.\, b&\;w.\nSource Co llection\nAFI/Filmoteca Española Collection (Library of Congress)\nDigita l Id\nhttps://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mbrsmi/ntscrm.00046435\nLibrary of Congress Control Number\n2024600507\nOnline Format\nimage\nvideo\nLCCN Permalink\nh ttps://lccn.loc.gov/2024600507\nAdditional Metadata Formats\nMARCXML Recor d\nMODS Record\nDublin Core Record\n\nCITATION\n\nChicago citation style:\ nMicheaux\, Oscar\, Film Director\, Film Producer\, Screenwriter\, Actor\, Evelyn Preer\, Flo Clements\, Charles D Lucas\, James D Ruffin\, Jack Che nault\, S. T Jacks\, William Starks\, and Mattie Edwards. Within Our Gates . produceds by Micheaux Film Corporationuction Company 1993. Video. https: //www.loc.gov/item/2024600507/.\n\nAPA citation style:\nMicheaux\, O.\, Pr eer\, E.\, Clements\, F.\, Lucas\, C. D.\, Ruffin\, J. D.\, Chenault\, J. [...] Edwards\, M. (1993) Within Our Gates. Micheaux Film Corporationuctio n Company\, prod [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress\, https:// www.loc.gov/item/2024600507/.\n\nMLA citation style:\nMicheaux\, Oscar\, F ilm Director\, Film Producer\, Screenwriter\, Actor\, et al. Within Our Ga tes. prod by Micheaux Film Corporationuction Company 1993. Video. Retrieve d from the Library of Congress\, <\;www.loc.gov/item/2024600507/>\;.\n \nFormat\nFilm\, Video\nContributor\nChenault\, Jack\nClements\, Flo\nEdwa rds\, Mattie\nJacks\, S. T. (Samuel True)\nLucas\, Charles D.\nMicheaux Fi lm Corporation\nMicheaux\, Oscar\nPreer\, Evelyn\nRuffin\, James D.\nStark s\, William\nDates\n1993\nLocation\nUnited States\nLanguage\nNo Linguistic Content\nNot Applicable\nSubject\nAfrican American Educators\nAfrican Ame rican Physicians\nAfrican American Schools\nEducational Benefactors\nFeatu re Films\nFiction Films\nHoodlums\nLynching\nRace Films\nRace Relations\nR acism\nSilent Films\nSocial Problem Films\nUnited States\n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\ n\n \"Within Our Gates 1920\" review from Movies That Move We\n\n Video li nk\n\n https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pDDAem6CS8\n\n Embed video\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n 0:1717 secondsHey\,\n0:3333 secondsWhat does it mean to tell you r own story when the world has decided it doesn't want to hear it?\n0:4141 secondsWhat does it cost personally\,\n0:4444 secondsfinancially\, spirit ually to force truth onto a screen that which\n0:5151 secondsthe entire in dustry was built to suppress? That question is at the center of what we'll be discussing today. And I\n0:5858 secondsthink the question makes Oscar Marco one of the most important figures in American film history\, not jus t black\n1:061 minute\, 6 secondsfilm history\, American history. Welcome back to Movies That Move We. I'm Nay and\n1:121 minute\, 12 secondstoday w e're going to deep dive into one silent film from 1920 that was nearly los t forever. abandon multiple cities\n1:221 minute\, 22 secondsand directly challenge the most successful films of the area the era.\n1:271 minute\, 2 7 secondsToday we're talking about within our gates by Oscar Mo.\n1:321 mi nute\, 32 secondsNow if you watched the episode last month we covered Marc o Marco's background in depth. So we're not going\n1:401 minute\, 40 secon dsto repeat that today. But there are two things that you need to keep on the sticky side of your brain before we can\n1:471 minute\, 47 secondstalk about this film. first Lincoln Motion Picture Company. They wanted to\n1: 541 minute\, 54 secondsadapt Mo's novel\, The Homesteader\, but they told him he couldn't direct it himself. So\, he started his own company.\n2:032 minutes\, 3 secondsJust like that\, he started the MO film and Book Compa ny in 1918.\n2:092 minutes\, 9 secondsHe raised the money by selling share s directly to black farmers and community members. That independence is ev erything and that's why this film exists at all.\n2:222 minutes\, 22 secon dsSecond\, and this is important\, you cannot understand within our gates without understanding what it was\n2:292 minutes\, 29 secondsresponding to . Birth of a nation by WD Griffith\, which came out in 2000\, I'm sorry\, 1915.\n2:382 minutes\, 38 secondsI'll make it plain. technically innovativ e\, cinematically influential\,\n2:442 minutes\, 44 secondsand deeply deva statingly racist. It glorifies the KKK as heroes and portrays black men as animalistic and predatory.\n2:542 minutes\, 54 secondsPresident Woodro Wi lson screened this at the White House. The NAACP tried to have\n3:013 minu tes\, 1 secondit banned and failed. It became the highest grossing film of its era and was used as a clan recruitment tool.\n3:113 minutes\, 11 seco ndsHistorians have linked it directly to the resurgence of clan membership in the years that followed.\n3:183 minutes\, 18 secondsThis is what Oscar Mako was working against.\n3:233 minutes\, 23 secondsNot just the images on a screen\, but real world violence that those images enabled.\n3:313 mi nutes\, 31 secondsThen comes 1919\,\n3:343 minutes\, 34 secondsthe Red Sum mer. Race massacres across the country. White mobs attacking black neighbo rhoods. Hundreds of Africanameans\n3:433 minutes\, 43 secondskilled. The c ountry was burning. Within our gates is released January 1920.\n3:513 minu tes\, 51 secondsIt is a direct answer and it doesn't flinch.\n3:573 minute s\, 57 secondsThe version that we have today is incomplete.\n4:034 minutes \, 3 secondsThe film was believed to be entirely lost until 1993 when a pr int was discovered in a Spanish\n4:114 minutes\, 11 secondsarchive in Madr id. It was cataloged under its Spanish title\, Lanra.\n4:184 minutes\, 18 secondsWhat we have runs about 79 minutes\, more than likely shorter than the original.\n4:264 minutes\, 26 secondsand some of the intertitles have been reconstructed from the Spanish translation.\n4:324 minutes\, 32 secon dsSo\, we're working with an important but still extraordinary artifact.\n 4:384 minutes\, 38 secondsThe central character in this film is Sylvia Lan dry\, played by Evelyn Prayer.\n4:454 minutes\, 45 secondsIf you don't kno w that name\, we need to take a moment because she's one of the most impor tant figures in this entire era of black film cinema.\n4:564 minutes\, 56 secondsSome film historians credit her as the first black movie star in th e modern sense. Someone with\n5:055 minutes\, 5 secondsgenuine screen pres ence\, a recognizable name\, and an audience that specifically\n5:125 minu tes\, 12 secondswanted to see her. She Marco had one of the great professi onal partnerships of American film history. She was his\n5:215 minutes\, 2 1 secondsleading lady across multiple films. She was his instrument for sh owing the world what black women on screen could look\n5:305 minutes\, 30 secondslike when somebody actually cared about their interiority.\n5:355 m inutes\, 35 secondsTragically\, she died in 1932 at just 36 years old due to complications following childbirth. Her daughter Eva survived\,\n5:475 minutes\, 47 secondsbut black cinema lost one of its brightest lights far too soon. When you watch this film\, know that you're\n5:545 minutes\, 54 secondswatching someone at the height of her powers. Give her the attentio n she deserved.\n6:026 minutes\, 2 secondsNow\, back to the character that she played\, Sylvia. She's educated\,\n6:086 minutes\, 8 secondsdignified \, she's complex. She's exactly the kind of black protagonist that Hollywo od simply was not putting on the\n6:166 minutes\, 16 secondsscreen. The st ory opens up with Sylvia in the north caught in a messy romantic situation with a man named Conrad.\n6:276 minutes\, 27 secondsHe's engaged to someo ne else. A jealous woman\, specifically her cousin named Elma\,\n6:346 min utes\, 34 secondsemploys a petty criminal to interfere in Sylvia's life.\n 6:406 minutes\, 40 secondsSylvia travels back to the south to raise money for a school\, the Pineywood School\, which was serving black and poor\n6: 496 minutes\, 49 secondschildren in the rural South. The school is actuall y based on a real institution\,\n6:546 minutes\, 54 secondsthe Pineywoods Country Life School in Mississippi.\n7:007 minutesShe believes deeply in e ducation as uplift.\n7:057 minutes\, 5 secondsShe secures a donation for t he school from a white northern philanthropist named Alina Warick.\n7:137 minutes\, 13 secondsBut the film's most devastating sequence comes through flashback. Sylvia's adoptive father\, Jasper Land Lands\n7:227 minutes\, 22 secondsLandry\, I'mma get this out. Is a sharecropper falsely accused o f murdering his white land owner\,\n7:317 minutes\, 31 secondsGriddlestone . In reality\, in reality\,\n7:347 minutes\, 34 secondsGriddle Stone was k illed by his white neighbor.\n7:397 minutes\, 39 secondsBut in this Americ a\, a black man accused is a black man hunted. What follows is a lynching sequence.\n7:497 minutes\, 49 secondsJasper and his wife are killed by a w hite mob. And in the flashback\, a young Sylvia is attacked by Griddleston e\n7:567 minutes\, 56 secondshimself. It's clearly framed as an attempted sexual assault. And then in a\n8:038 minutes\, 3 secondsgeniusly stunning narrative turn\, he stops because he recognizes by a scar on\n8:108 minute s\, 10 secondsher chest that she's his biological daughter.\n8:158 minutes \, 15 secondsThe woman he sees as less than human is his own child. The fi lm ends with Sylvia\n8:248 minutes\, 24 secondsback in the north. She's be en shot. She recovers. And a doctor named Viven who\n8:328 minutes\, 32 se condsloves her is at her side. And they're united.\n8:378 minutes\, 37 sec ondsIt's more than a hopeful ending. More It's a more hopeful ending than the film's brutality might suggest\,\n8:468 minutes\, 46 secondsthough. Th at hope feels hard. One earned through an unflinching look at what black l ife in America actually look like.\n8:578 minutes\, 57 secondsMy co was wo rking with real formal craft. This is not a rough or primitive\n9:049 minu tes\, 4 secondsfilm even by 1920s standards. He uses close-ups\, especiall y on Preer's face to\n9:139 minutes\, 13 secondscapture that emotion for a character that Hollywood typically keeps flat. The\n9:219 minutes\, 21 se condsparallel ending during the lynching sequence mirrors a technique Grif fith used in Birth of a Nation. Cutting between locations to build tension .\n9:339 minutes\, 33 secondsThat segment is in fact very intense.\n9:389 minutes\, 38 secondsBut my co completely flips the moral framework where G riffith was using that\n9:449 minutes\, 44 secondstechnique to frame white women as needing protection and rescue from black men. My co uses it to i ndict white\n9:559 minutes\, 55 secondsviolence against black people. He's using the master's tools deliberately.\n10:0410 minutes\, 4 secondsThere are a number of themes to look at here. The first would be the counter nar narrative as a political act. My co-\n10:1410 minutes\, 14 secondsunderst ood something that we now take for granted in media criticism.\n10:2010 mi nutes\, 20 secondsRepresentation is never neutral.\n10:2410 minutes\, 24 s econdsImages teach people who is human and who's not considered\n10:3110 m inutes\, 31 secondshuman. They shape how communities see themselves and ho w they're seen by others. Birth of a Nation was actively\n10:4010 minutes\ , 40 secondsharming black Americans\, not just offending them. The images in that that film gave psychological permission for violence.\n10:5110 min utes\, 51 secondsThey confirmed a worldview that said black people were da ngerous and subhuman.\n10:5810 minutes\, 58 secondsMy co on the other hand responds by creating images that insist on black humanity in all of its c omplexity.\n11:0711 minutes\, 7 secondsSylvia is not a saint. She's naviga ting a messy romantic situation at the film's\n11:1311 minutes\, 13 second sopening. She's made compromises. She's fully human and that full humanity is a\n11:2111 minutes\, 21 secondspolitical statement. The second theme i s the in intracial\n11:2811 minutes\, 28 secondsdebate. Here's something t o miss on a casual watch. My co is\n11:3611 minutes\, 36 secondsalso engag ing with a major intracial debate happening in real time.\n11:4311 minutes \, 43 secondsThis is the era of doce versus Booker T.\n11:4711 minutes\, 4 7 secondsWashington. Do is arguing for full civil rights and higher educat ion.\n11:5311 minutes\, 53 secondsWashington\, on the other hand\, is argu ing for industrial education and accommodation within white power\n12:0012 minutesstructures. The film has characters who represent different positi ons. There's a\n12:0612 minutes\, 6 secondspreacher named Old Ned who is s ickant towards white patrons. He\n12:1312 minutes\, 13 secondsperforms the version of himself they want to see. And my co treats that attitude with real contempt.\n12:2212 minutes\, 22 secondsThen there's Sylvia. She's com mitted to education and uplift\,\n12:2812 minutes\, 28 secondsbut she has to navigate white patronage to do it. When she secures a donation\n12:3412 minutes\, 34 secondsfrom Elena Warwick\, the film doesn't present it simp ly. Where does the money come from? Who does it ultimately serve?\n12:4412 minutes\, 44 secondsWhat are the unspoken terms? My code doesn't give you easy answers.\n12:5112 minutes\, 51 secondsThis film is an active convers ation with black intellectual tradition.\n12:5912 minutes\, 59 secondsThe third theme\, womanhood and sexual violence. Let's make it plain.\n13:0613 minutes\, 6 secondsOne of the things within our gates does that is genuin ely radical for 1920\n13:1213 minutes\, 12 secondsor frankly for any era i s to put the sexual violence against black women on\n13:1913 minutes\, 19 secondsthe screen as historical and present reality.\n13:2513 minutes\, 25 secondsThe griddlestone assault on Sylvia is not ambiguous. It's the real ization that\n13:3113 minutes\, 31 secondshe is her biological father. a p roduct of an earlier assault on her black\n13:3813 minutes\, 38 secondsmot her. It collapses the central mythology white southerners used to justify lynching.\n13:4713 minutes\, 47 secondsThe narrative was always we're prot ecting white women from black men.\n13:5413 minutes\, 54 secondsMy co on t he other hand says look at what's actually happening. Look at who's actual ly assaulting whom. Look at the\n14:0314 minutes\, 3 secondschildren that violence is producing because how much more evidence do you need?\n14:1014 minutes\, 10 secondsIda B. Wells has been documenting this or had been do cumenting this in her journalism for decades.\n14:1814 minutes\, 18 second sMy co put the argument on film and notably Sylvia survives.\n14:2414 minu tes\, 24 secondsShe endures. She carries this history in her body and she continues. and how much\n14:3114 minutes\, 31 secondsof that is just what black women do even now.\n14:3814 minutes\, 38 secondsThere is something d eeply important in that refusal to let her be defined only by what was don e to her.\n14:4814 minutes\, 48 secondsThe fourth theme is censorship.\n14 :5214 minutes\, 52 secondsChicago sensors initially refused to allow the f ilm\, citing concerns that the\n15:0015 minuteslynching sequence would pro voke racial unrest. Think about that for just a\n15:0515 minutes\, 5 secon dsmoment. A film depicting racial violence was rejected because it might u pset\n15:1415 minutes\, 14 secondspeople who saw the depictions of racial violence.\n15:1915 minutes\, 19 secondsThe concern wasn't for black audien ces processing their trauma on the screen.\n15:2615 minutes\, 26 secondsTh e concern was for white comfort.\n15:3015 minutes\, 30 secondsMy co fought back. The man was tenacious. He negotiated.\n15:3615 minutes\, 36 seconds He may have made some cuts. We don't know exactly what changed because we don't have the original print of the\n15:4315 minutes\, 43 secondsfilm. Bu t the film got shown. It played to black audiences across the country.\n15 :5015 minutes\, 50 secondsThe Chicago Defender\, the Pittsburgh Cur Courie r\, they covered this film seriously.\n15:5815 minutes\, 58 secondsSo\, th is is a film that we nearly lost.\n16:0416 minutes\, 4 secondsOf the rough ly 44 films that Michael made\, we have 12. And I don't think I\n16:1216 m inutes\, 12 secondshave my Yes\, I do. We have 12. The rest are lost becau se the films deteriorated.\n16:2116 minutes\, 21 secondsNo one with instit utional power. And this is the entire collection here. No one with institu tional power saw fit to\n16:2916 minutes\, 29 secondspreserve them. Nitrat e film which was used at the time is fragile and race\n16:3616 minutes\, 3 6 secondsfilms were not prioritized. They weren't considered worthy of arc hiving.\n16:4216 minutes\, 42 secondswithin our gates survived because a S panish archive preserved a print under a different name.\n16:5216 minutes\ , 52 secondsHad someone not cataloged it correctly\,\n16:5516 minutes\, 55 secondswe may have never known that this film existed.\n16:5916 minutes\, 59 secondsThe film preservation was not a neutral act. What gets saves te lls you what a\n17:0617 minutes\, 6 secondsculture values and what it's wi lling to let disappear. It's it goes back to that\n17:1417 minutes\, 14 se condsthing we've repeatedly said here\, that thing that Walter Mosley says about\n17:2017 minutes\, 20 secondsbooks\, which is if you're not in the the story\, you're not in the culture. And\n17:2917 minutes\, 29 secondsth e fact that we were able to find this film\, find 12 of the 44 films\, it puts\n17:3817 minutes\, 38 secondsus back into the silent film movie era e ra and it solidifies us within the\n17:4617 minutes\, 46 secondsAmerican c ulture of that time as something other than slaves and in servitude to any body else.\n17:5617 minutes\, 56 secondsThe Library of Congress added with in our gates to the National Film Registry in 1993.\n18:0418 minutes\, 4 s econdsIt's now recognized as one of the most significant American films ev er made.\n18:1118 minutes\, 11 secondsThink about my co's lineage. What di d he get started here?\n18:1818 minutes\, 18 secondsYou have my co to the LA Rebellion filmmakers to Spike Lee to Julie Dash to Ryan Cougler to Ava Duivere.\n18:3118 minutes\, 31 secondsIt's a whole line. The insistence on determination\,\n18:3618 minutes\, 36 secondsthe refusal to wait for Holl ywood to tell your story accurately\, the willingness to go directly to yo ur audience and say this is for us.\n18:4818 minutes\, 48 secondsMy co was doing what black filmmakers are still doing today\, fighting for the righ t to depict black life in its full complexity. We're not a monolith.\n19:0 219 minutes\, 2 secondsHe just had to do it with far fewer resources in a far more hostile environment. Remember we talked about this last month. Yo u had\, you know\,\n19:1419 minutes\, 14 secondsWarner Brothers\, Fox\, Pa ramount. They were fighting each other to get started.\n19:2019 minutes\, 20 secondsBut at a certain point\, they fought so that they could get the resources\, the films\, the cameras\, everything\, and\n19:2719 minutes\, 27 secondsfocus on building their empires. And at a certain point their in fighting became\n19:3419 minutes\, 34 secondshealthy competition. But even in that even when they were at war with each other and fighting for posit ion to be\n19:4319 minutes\, 43 secondsthe Hollywood studio collectively t hey were not including black people.\n19:5319 minutes\, 53 secondsWhat doe s this film demand of us now? When you watch Within Our Gates today\,\n20: 0120 minutes\, 1 secondyou can and you can um it's in the public domain. T his is more than a hundred This film is more than a hundred years old.\n20 :1020 minutes\, 10 secondsUm and I'll make sure that I post the links for you. It demands something from you. The lynching sequence is hard to\n20:1 920 minutes\, 19 secondswatch and you know it it's not filmed like it woul d be today where you know\n20:2820 minutes\, 28 secondsyou get visuals and closeups of of what's happening. But the pace of the\n20:3620 minutes\, 3 6 secondsfilm at that point makes it hard to watch and you find yourself t ensing up.\n20:4220 minutes\, 42 secondsI know I did. Even though I could see in the filming that maybe they had someone standing on a stool at a ce rtain point\,\n20:5220 minutes\, 52 secondsit was no less impactful.\n20:5 420 minutes\, 54 secondsHe wasn't making art for comfort. He was making ar t as testimony.\n21:0121 minutes\, 1 secondBut what I found most powerful is not the horror.\n21:0621 minutes\, 6 secondsIt's Evelyn Prair's face. t he moments where his camera simply rests on her\,\n21:1521 minutes\, 15 se condslets her think\, lets her feel. Even though there are no audible word s in\n21:2221 minutes\, 22 secondsthis film\, the actors emoted wonderfull y.\n21:2721 minutes\, 27 secondsThose moments are as radical as anything e lse in the film. He's saying her inner\n21:3421 minutes\, 34 secondslife m atters. her character is worth your attention in 1920\n21:4121 minutes\, 4 1 secondson screen. And when you really think about it\, that in itself is a revolutionary act.\n21:4921 minutes\, 49 secondsAnd knowing what we kno w now\, knowing that she would be gone just 12 years later at 36 years old \, there's something\n21:5721 minutes\, 57 secondsvery precious about ever y single film that she's in. Watch her closely.\n22:0522 minutes\, 5 secon dsSo\, that's all I have for you today. Um\, the film was banned\, nearly erased\,\n22:1422 minutes\, 14 secondsrediscovered in a foreign archive\, and is now exactly where it belongs\, at the\n22:2122 minutes\, 21 seconds center of conversation about what American cinema is to be and what it ref used to be. Oscar Mako didn't ask\n22:2922 minutes\, 29 secondspermission. He raised money from his community. He built his own infrastructure and h e made the films he believed needed to exist.\n22:4222 minutes\, 42 second sI think I said this in the last episode. He was ahead of his time. And be cause he was and because he did\,\n22:5122 minutes\, 51 secondswe have a 7 9 minute survival. This piece of testimony that is still speaking a 100 pl us years later.\n23:0223 minutes\, 2 secondsIf you watch one film after th is\, make sure it's within our gates. It's on YouTube. It's in the Library of Congress. It's on MGM.\n23:1423 minutes\, 14 secondsYou can get it fro m your local library.\n23:1623 minutes\, 16 secondsYou can find this film for free. Give Evelyn Prayer your full attention.\n23:2423 minutes\, 24 se condsGive M give Oscar my co the engagement that he was fighting for. real ly study his study his film\, study him.\n23:3723 minutes\, 37 secondsYou know\, as I watched the film\, I thought about what he had to do to be a f ilmmaker.\n23:4423 minutes\, 44 secondsHe was a key figure in building the black film industry. Not the only\, but the well-known figure.\n23:5623 m inutes\, 56 secondsI wondered what would he think of the black film indust ry today.\n24:0324 minutes\, 3 secondsAll right. Well\, that's it. Thanks for spending your time with me. Like and follow our Facebook and YouTube p age\,\n24:1224 minutes\, 12 secondsMovies That Move Wee\, and share this i f it meant something to you. If you got anything out of it\, go ahead and share\n24:2024 minutes\, 20 secondsit with someone you know. Until next ti me. Bye.\n\n\n\n\n \n\n MY THOUGHTS\n\n What does it mean to tell your own story when others with more power decide they don't want to see it?\n\n W hat does it mean to tell stories that the larger industry was designed to oppress?\n\n 1919 The red summer\, was the USA burning or was the black po pulace in the usa being burned?\n\n 4:22 the Spanish title is La Negra\, t he black... Within Our Gates Spanish title is \, the black. \n\n 5:41 I d idn't know Evelyn Preer died in child birth\n\n The funny thing is Micheau x's stories had more complex characters than white financed films for deca des after.\n\n 6:50 Piney Woods Country Life School https://en.wikipedia.o rg/wiki/Piney_Woods_Country_Life_School\n\n The largest boarding school fo r black descended of enslaved\, one of four Black DOS boarding schools. \ n\n https://www.pineywoods.org/\n\n 9:59 well said\, Michaeux reverses the roles from \"birth of a nation\"\n\n 10:30 good point\, representation is never neutral. \n\n 11:05 Also\, shows the power of white violence\, but also treats whites with a humanity\, that his white peers do not do for b lacks.\n\n 11:59 hmmmm well WEB Dubois/ Booker T Washington/ Marcus Garvey / Frederick Douglass are all at the same time. \n\n They all advocate for the rights of Black individuals or groups. They all advocate for learning \, greater learning among black individuals or groups. \n\n I think their variance is in the response to white violence and sequent actions or goal s to black people. \n\n Dubois heading the white jewish financed National association for the advancement of colored people don't take even one per cent of the crimes against black people by whites to court\, while he supp orts a phenotypically integrated workplace.  I argue\, Dubois wants civil rights but can only demand it as a public request to whites\, alongside a request to allow blacks in white owned labor environments based on merit. But paid labor is rarely based on merit. \n\n Washington wants Black peo ple who at that time for ninety percent in the former confederacy states\, to remain in the south and uphold a less intertwined form of integration. Washington doesn't want segregation but he wants to comfort whites by sta ying out of their towns/schools/business areas and getting black people to focus on building their own. \n\n The variance between Dubois side Washi ngton is in their end goals. Dubois end goal is to have communities/workpl aces/schools where whites side blacks are one people. With that kind of go al\, you can't have historic black colleges side historic white colleges. You can't have blacks towns side white towns. Government for Dubois is a t ool to force total/holistic integration. This suited the white jew financi ers for Dubois whose strategy was to guide blacks to have a holistic integ ration to get whites who are not jewish to embrace the white phenotypical populace with no boundaries in gender/religion/language/geographic ancestr y. Looking at the future the White jews got what they wanted as the modern white populace at the time of this writing doesn't have any of the intern al blockades to whites who are not male/Christian/European descent as in t he eighteen hundreds or early nineteen hundreds.  Washington's end goal i s to have black communities/black schools/black businesses that only relat e to whites financially\, and stay out of government. The whites who finan ced Washington didn't have any allegiance to poor whites in the south and saw the black populace of the south as a potential offset to the poor whit e populace of the south. The Jim crow laws in many ways were pushed by fin ancially poor whites who realized the black southern populace if not kept in an extremely negative financial state using the governments of the sout hern states\, would be a rival and upend their position in bargaining with rich whites. Looking at today and the southern states\, and how the white southern populace is the base for the anti immigrant position\, it shows truth. The white southern populace didn't mind immigrants as long as they were hindering black financial growth by being cheaper labor or blockaded from bettering poor whites by their illegal status or extended jim crow la ws. \n\n Marcus Garvey though supported black rights plus education. The problem is Garvey didn't believe anywhere in the American continent was pl ausible for black rights to be upheld or for black education to lead to op portunity. And it is truthful\, if you look at Mexico\, brazil\, the usa\, even Haiti after henri Christophe died\, the entire American continent\, canada to argentina\, before jean Jacques Dessalines or after henri Christ ophe in Haiti\, was an anti black place. yes\, examples throughout the Ame rican continent existed for black individual examples\, going through many white walls. But\, what is the point of life? is the point of life to str uggle? I argue no. I argue the point of life is to have it good\, have it easy\, have it fun and ninety nine percent of black people in the entire A merican continent \, canada to argentina\, late eighteen hundreds or early nineteen hundreds\, didn't have anything good or easy or fun. So leave th e American continent. The tragedy is the same whites from Canada to Argent ina who preached dislike of blacks hated the idea of black people leaving. Why? because white unity was only based on the presence of black people \ , in the entire American continent. The native American\, indios had alrea dy been decimated in populace in such a way\, they will never have the num bers to threaten\, thus whites can't unify around an empty threat. \n\n A s for Frederick Douglass\, he was older but his point wasn't to support du bois/washington/garvey but to state his belief\, that the usa warrants sur viving. Douglass point is the usa can become something no other government can and if black people leave en masse or don't seek complete integration \, the usa can never become what he dreamed it become\, a country of human s.\n\n On one side note\, Booker T Washington's wife was a white Asian and it is interesting that when you look at white Asians as a populace in the usa\, they act the way booker t Washington wanted black descended of ensl aved to act. Don't get involved in government\, focus on your own everythi ng. Not criminalizing integration but make everything a financial position first or foremost. In cheap retrospect\, the one thing Washington didn't comprehend\, and this connects to Haiti. Black DOSers relationship to the usa isn't fiscal\, it isn't fiscal capitalistic. Black DOSers are not in t he united states of America to make money. Black DOSers are in the usa bec ause whites wanted it. Black DOSers can not find any reason to support the usa based on enslaved forebears. Ala\, the often said while very erroneou s\, our forebears helped build the usa line. It is the great Black DOSer s in saying that line. My forebears were enslaved\, but for anyone to sugges t they cared one bit about anything in the usa\, is an ugly lie. And this is the fundamental problem with said four leaders\, each was bound to fail . WEB Dubois was being used to make unify white groups. Booker T Washingto n couldn't protect black people from fiscally poor whites violence. Garvey didn't believe in the usa or the American continent as a good place for b lacks and whites in majority wanted blacks to change their minds\, to anyt hing but anti America. Frederick Douglass felt the Black DOS populace shou ld fight through anything to remain in the usa for a greater human achieve ment that wouldn't benefit blacks in any of the ways they wanted but would support humanity in a way he felt it needed.\n\n 13:07 very true\, i can' t think of any other film showing white violence to black women that stron gly\, made in the usa. \n\n 14:19 i wonder your thought to passing?\n\n 1 5:18 good point\, white comfort\, this goes back to gone with the wind\, a song of the south\, birth of a nation\, even king kong\, make white peopl e feel good about themselves\, by not showing white people in any negative light. \n\n 16:37 yes\, what gets saved isn't neutral and is also expens ive. You have to say\, what were black wealthy people doing? they could ha d saved.\n\n 17:21 good quote from mosely\, if you are not in the story\, you are not in the culture. \n\n 18:29 thank you for mentioning Julie Das h\n\n 20:00 What does watching the film demand today?\n\n 21:27 yes\, love ly emotion from the thespians.\n\n 22:13 great show\n\n\n\n Oscar Micheaux biography from Movies That Move We\n\n https://youtu.be/1C5hxGrohps?si=hn AH78ulXh4-pyMg\n\n\n\n my comment\n\n What are your thoughts to the film p assing?\n\n Thanks for mentioning Julie Dash.\n\n Great review... Oscar Mi cheaux in many ways incorporated WEB Dubois's philosophies aside Booker T Washington's philosophies in the production of this film.\n\n I even wonde r how many non blacks saw his films and were inspired by his work.\n\n Gre at question\, what would he think of the black film industry today? What w ould he think of the Black film industry in or out of the USA? Black ident ity today is global but is of many parts. Each part has its own environmen t. What would he think of Nollywood? What would he think of the Black film industry in the USA which monetarily is based on a handful of black produ cers: blacks with money or who can access money to make films? \n\n That is such an engaging question you ask at the end. I wish he was alive to an swer.  I wish he had a journal. I wish I had all his screenplays. I know he wrote books alongside the films but it seems many are lost. \n\n\n\n P rofile of OScar Micheaux\n\n video link\n\n https://youtu.be/1C5hxGrohps?s i=LKAo5vDY1-rQksl9\n\n\n\n Embed video\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n 0:2929 secondsHey\,\n0:3131 secondsHey everyone\, welcome back to another edition of Movies That Move We.\n0:3737 secondsThis is the place where fil m isn't just entertainment. It's history\, it's culture\, it's memory.\n0: 4545 secondsSome episodes that we do are about the movies\, you know\, com mentary\, ratings\,\n0:5252 secondsall of that stuff. But but today\, this is just about one man. This month we're\n0:5959 secondsfocusing on black film history and today we're going to be profiling Oscar Mako.\n1:081 minu te\, 8 secondsWhy is this episode different?\n1:111 minute\, 11 secondsThi s is different like I said because there's no reviews\, no ranking. We're doing a profile of someone who is very important in black film history.\n1 :211 minute\, 21 secondsWe're talking about how film history gets made and who gets left out of it.\n1:291 minute\, 29 secondsYou know\, while Holly wood was being built\, Oscar MO was already working.\n1:371 minute\, 37 se condsExcuse me. He was a writer\, director\, producer\, distributor\,\n1:4 61 minute\, 46 secondspromoter. He was independent before independence was ever really a category.\n1:551 minute\, 55 secondsNow\, one of the movies that I mentioned um that we should watch and it brings context to this co nversation is Titans:\n2:062 minutes\, 6 secondsThe Rise of Hollywood\, wh ich you can find on Netflix.\n2:112 minutes\, 11 secondsSo\, let's talk ab out it. You know\, the start of the American film industry was early 1900s .\n2:192 minutes\, 19 secondsUm that was the period of the short film.\n2: 252 minutes\, 25 secondsUm the industry itself was very tight and what I m ean by that is there were a few men controlling the whole industry.\n2:382 minutes\, 38 secondsIt started in New York. It was in cities like New Yor k and Chicago. And in these\n2:452 minutes\, 45 secondscities there were a group of people who you had to go to for everything for the\n2:522 minute s\, 52 secondsfilm for camera set for everything. You could only use certa in actors and you couldn't use anybody else's actor or producer.\n3:043 mi nutes\, 4 secondsIt was giving very what some might call moblike.\n3:103 m inutes\, 10 secondsThis group that ran everything was called the trust.\n3 :173 minutes\, 17 secondsAnd this particular group consider included excus e me included Thomas Edison.\n3:283 minutes\, 28 secondsMhm. That one that Thomas Edison he controlled production and distribution.\n3:363 minutes\, 36 secondsum at the time he in America he was the one who was making came ras. That was the only person that you could go to.\n3:443 minutes\, 44 se condsSo it made it very difficult for people to be filmmakers. But they di d it.\n3:543 minutes\, 54 secondsAnd at the point that we have three early titans come up\, the film industry is shifting from novelty to industry.\ n4:054 minutes\, 5 secondsPower consolidated very quickly.\n4:094 minutes\ , 9 secondsSo again\, the early Titans\, Thomas Edison\, he controlled the patents. He controlled who could legally make a\n4:164 minutes\, 16 secon dsfilm. And then you have these three players who enter who their their wo rk still stands today.\n4:264 minutes\, 26 secondsThese companies still ex ist. You have Adolf Zukor.\n4:324 minutes\, 32 secondsHe created Paramount . Um he was the first one to go with feature length films\, meaning\n4:404 minutes\, 40 secondsearly films were only a few minutes long and they wer e silent.\n4:464 minutes\, 46 secondsAll you had to read was body language and dramatic gestures. That's what early films were. Um he created the fe ature\n4:554 minutes\, 55 secondslen length film which was 30 minutes an h our long. He created the star system.\n5:015 minutes\, 1 secondSo all of a sudden we have people who are marketed and promoted as this is who\n5:085 minutes\, 8 secondsyou want to be. Is very New York centered early on. Mo re about him later.\n5:165 minutes\, 16 secondsUm Car Carl Lamel he opened a theater making movies accessible to the general public. Um\n5:255 minut es\, 25 secondsagain films at this time were a luxury item novelty. You go t dressed up. It was like going to the theater you know and\n5:345 minutes \, 34 secondsonly certain people could afford that luxury.\n5:395 minutes\ , 39 secondsBut he brought it to the people and he was one who fought Edis on and one of the\n5:475 minutes\, 47 secondspeople in the industry who wa s the first to move to California and build Universal City that was around 1915.\n5:595 minutes\, 59 secondsWilliam Fox that Fox brought vertical in tegration\,\n6:056 minutes\, 5 secondsmeaning he brought the production\, the distribution\, and the theaters to the\n6:116 minutes\, 11 secondssyst em. For him that was ideal because he did it all\, including creating a pl ace to show his films exclusively\,\n6:226 minutes\, 22 secondswhereas eve rybody else was shopping around to see who would be willing to present the ir films.\n6:316 minutes\, 31 secondsLewis B. mayor\, one-third of the MGM uh film company. He brought brought to\n6:406 minutes\, 40 secondsthe uh the industry the prestige\, the glamour. Again\, going off of uh what\n6:4 76 minutes\, 47 secondsLamel also brought to it all the glitz and the bran ding power and the razledazzle\n6:546 minutes\, 54 secondsthat um comes wi th Hollywood that we know of uh in Hollywood.\n7:027 minutes\, 2 secondsan other person that um she isn't mentioned as one of the big three but\n7:08 7 minutes\, 8 secondsshe was still influential and that's Mary Pigford. Sh e was an actress\n7:157 minutes\, 15 secondsum and she brought her writing skills as well as her acting talents to the industry.\n7:247 minutes\, 24 secondsSo important clarification that I want to make here is that it was n't one man that moved Hollywood west.\n7:357 minutes\, 35 secondsZukor wa sn't the one who led the move to the west coast. He followed\n7:427 minute s\, 42 secondsLamel and Fox were the first two to move to California.\n7:4 97 minutes\, 49 secondsWhy California?\n7:517 minutes\, 51 secondsIt was i deal because it offered an escape from Thomas Edison.\n7:577 minutes\, 57 secondsThe weather was ideal. They could film outdoors. They had plenty of of landscape to choose from. They had the\n8:058 minutes\, 5 secondsspace . And most importantly\, they had control. They didn't have to answer to\n 8:138 minutes\, 13 secondsthe trust. they could do their own thing\, set t heir own rules\, and they did.\n8:218 minutes\, 21 secondsHollywood was bu ilt with capital\, land\, and legal protection.\n8:298 minutes\, 29 second sOkay? In short\, infrastructure equals power. And in the film industry\,\ n8:378 minutes\, 37 secondsthey became the power.\n8:408 minutes\, 40 seco ndsJust consider for a moment how quickly the industry grew. In just 20 ye ars\, it\n8:488 minutes\, 48 secondswent from those short five minute sile nt reels to featurelength productions with\n8:558 minutes\, 55 secondsdial ogue and razledazzle and music and fanfare. Um\,\n9:039 minutes\, 3 second sit it moved very quickly.\n9:079 minutes\, 7 secondsOne important truth\, something to keep in mind is Hollywood wasn't neutral. It was white\,\n9: 169 minutes\, 16 secondsit was male\, and it was capital backed.\n9:239 mi nutes\, 23 secondsBlack presence in the industry was visible\,\n9:289 minu tes\, 28 secondsbut it was limited. So you saw um the servant\, the butler or on the other end\n9:389 minutes\, 38 secondsof the spectrum people who were involved in crime and immorality\, the stereotypes.\n9:459 minutes\, 45 secondsUm black people weren't missing necessarily\, but they were loc ked out of\n9:539 minutes\, 53 secondsthe system. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. In contrast\, you have Oscar Mako.\n10:0210 minutes \, 2 secondsHe had no studio lot. He had no patents.\n10:0710 minutes\, 7 secondsHe had no theater chains. And he didn't have any legal protection. Let me tell you a little bit about him.\n10:1510 minutes\, 15 secondsHe wa s born in 1884. His parents were former slaves. They moved as a part of\n1 0:2110 minutes\, 21 secondsthe great migration from Kentucky to the Chicag o area\, Illinois. Um his mom was a\n10:3310 minutes\, 33 secondsbig fan o f um Booker T. Washington\, you know\, and she w she was in full agreement with what he\n10:4210 minutes\, 42 secondssaid about being educated. And of course\, this is what she taught her son Oscar about. And so you'll see that in\n10:5110 minutes\, 51 secondshis films where you have the the edu cated\, you have the class differences. You'll see all of that\n10:5910 mi nutes\, 59 secondsstuff in his films. Again\, more about that later. Um he was one of the early\n11:0711 minutes\, 7 secondshomesteaders when the go vernment was giving away land out left out west. He went ahead and he put in his bid and he got himself a plot of land in Oklahoma.\n11:1911 minutes \, 19 secondsand he worked the land and he proved to his neighbors because this was a community. Homesteading was a community\,\n11:2711 minutes\, 2 7 secondsnot just something you did independently. He proved to his white neighbors around him that he could do this. He did it well. Now\, during o ne hard winter where he couldn't harvest\,\n11:4011 minutes\, 40 secondsco uldn't bring in crops or anything like that\, and again\, that's something everyone in that area was going through at the time\, not just him. He sa t down\n11:4811 minutes\, 48 secondsand he wrote his first novel called Ho mesteader. It's not an autobiography\,\n11:5511 minutes\, 55 secondsbut it is based on his experience. Um\,\n12:0012 minutesand he he went ahead and he self-published that\, you know\, he went door todo with it. Um\, same thing\n12:0912 minutes\, 9 secondsapplied with his films. He wrote his scr ipts and he self- financed those films. Okay.\n12:1712 minutes\, 17 second sUm\, Lamel escaped Edison. Mo escaped Hollywood.\n12:2612 minutes\, 26 se condsHe didn't have to avoid it. He didn't have to engage with it either.\ n12:3112 minutes\, 31 secondsWhat did he put on screen? He talked about\, as I was mentioning earlier\,\n12:3812 minutes\, 38 secondsall of the topi cs that were important to the black community at the time\, um\, like colo rism\,\n12:4712 minutes\, 47 secondspassing\, tension between the classes\ , sexual violence\, religious hypocrisy\,\n12:5612 minutes\, 56 secondsum\ , migration\, ambition\, and moral compromise.\n13:0213 minutes\, 2 second sSomething important to note\, his work was not uplift only. It wasn't\n13 :0813 minutes\, 8 secondsconsidered safe or sanitized. He was telling comp lex stories and censoring\n13:1513 minutes\, 15 secondsAfrican-American pe ople in these stories. He wasn't trying to comfort uh\n13:2213 minutes\, 2 2 secondswhite people or um play what do you call it? Respectability polit ics with black\n13:2913 minutes\, 29 secondspeople. He was telling plain t ruth. This is what life looked like from the black perspective.\n13:3913 m inutes\, 39 secondsHe wasn't alone in this pocket of independent uh film i ndustry.\n13:4713 minutes\, 47 secondsThe system for black filmmakers was fragile.\n13:5113 minutes\, 51 secondsAnd so you had people out there who were trying to show films\, who were making films. Their work\, unfortunat ely\, was not preserved.\n14:0314 minutes\, 3 secondsNot all of Oscar MO's work was preserved\, but we have more of his films available than we do s ome of the other players in the industry.\n14:1314 minutes\, 13 secondsSom e of those folks were William D. Foster.\n14:1714 minutes\, 17 secondsHe w as a black film producer\, um\, owner of Lincoln Mo Motion Picture Company .\n14:2414 minutes\, 24 secondsUh\, Sherman H. Dudley is another. He start ed the black theater circuit and\n14:3114 minutes\, 31 secondsthe black va udeville circuit which later became the theater owners booking association \n14:3914 minutes\, 39 secondsalso known as Toba. Um he was key in distrib ution and getting these things\n14:4714 minutes\, 47 secondsinto uh certai n spaces in black spaces. Um\,\n14:5414 minutes\, 54 secondsOscar Mako's f ilms were they were played in black theaters\,\n15:0015 minutesblackowned theaters. There weren't a lot of them\, but they were played in blackowned theaters. They were played in segregated theaters. He had the support of churches\,\n15:1115 minutes\, 11 secondslodges\, community halls\, and and road showings\, um\, screenings\, excuse me.\n15:1915 minutes\, 19 second sUm\, another way that his films made it into the community were uh Midnig ht\n15:2615 minutes\, 26 secondsRambles\, which were usually white owned t heaters that would show black films after midnight so that the\n15:3615 mi nutes\, 36 secondsblack and white patrons would never meet and they didn't have to worry about hearing complaints from white patrons\n15:4415 minute s\, 44 secondsabout\, oh my gosh\, what why are these people even in this building. So those\n15:5015 minutes\, 50 secondsthings were were how his f ilms made it to to the masses. Um key cities\,\n15:5915 minutes\, 59 secon dsyou hear people talk a lot about uh the Chitlin Circuit. Well\,\n16:0716 minutes\, 7 secondsthey focused on\, and when I say they\,\n16:0916 minut es\, 9 secondsI'm talking about um oh gosh\, I just lost the name. um Fost er and Dudley and\n16:1816 minutes\, 18 secondsOscar Mako and other filmma kers of the time\, you know\, they focused on\n16:2516 minutes\, 25 second sdistributing their films in places like Chicago\, Harlem\, New York City\ , Philadelphia\, Baltimore\, Kansas City\,\n16:3416 minutes\, 34 secondsth e great migration cities because that's where we were coming from. That's where we were going to when we were\n16:4216 minutes\, 42 secondsmoving fr om the south. There were some spaces where they did show films\, these bla ck films in the south\, but of course they had to be very careful about th at.\n16:5516 minutes\, 55 secondsHollywood asks\, \"How do we control the market?\" Oscar Mo asks\, \"Who already has\n17:0117 minutes\, 1 seconda s creen actors and impact?\"\n17:0917 minutes\, 9 secondsyou know\, he start ed a lot of careers and I wish I wrote down the names of uh\n17:1617 minut es\, 16 secondssome of them\, but one of the most notable\, most recognize d is Paul Robson.\n17:2317 minutes\, 23 secondsUm Paul Robson\, he was a f ootball player\, of course\, if you've ever heard of him\, he had a magnif icent singing\n17:3117 minutes\, 31 secondsvoice. He acted in Oscar Mico's film Body and Soul 1925.\n17:4017 minutes\, 40 secondsIt was a dual role. So he played both a preacher and a con man in this film about moral compl exity.\n17:5117 minutes\, 51 secondsDoes that sound familiar? Sinners. Any body? Yeah. He did it first before Michael B.\n17:5917 minutes\, 59 second sJordan. Why does this matter? Again\, this story challenged stereotypes.\ n18:0718 minutes\, 7 secondsIt addressed themes of race\, morality\,\n18:1 118 minutes\, 11 secondsstruggles of the black community\, and of course\, it did it from the black perspective\,\n18:1918 minutes\, 19 secondsblack audience. What What did he make possible with this? Why did this film mat ter so much? because his films and he\n18:2818 minutes\, 28 secondsdid ove r 40 in his career trained the expectations of the black\n18:3518 minutes\ , 35 secondscommunity. What they should expect from black stardom. It norm alized seeing black people on film. And again\,\n18:4518 minutes\, 45 seco ndsnot being the stereotype\, but being professionals\,\n18:5118 minutes\, 51 secondsnot living in a shack somewhere\, but living in the big city an d having careers and things like that. Um\, think\n19:0019 minutesabout ac tors and actresses like Lena Horn\,\n19:0519 minutes\, 5 secondsDorothy Da ndridge\, and Harab Bella Fonte. They were some of the the the\n19:1219 mi nutes\, 12 secondsfolks that took on complex roles laid complex roles late r on in in black film history. He didn't launch their careers\,\n19:2319 m inutes\, 23 secondsbut he did make them possible by laying the groundwork. \n19:3119 minutes\, 31 secondsHow many films are left? A lot of his films are lost. Um\, like I mentioned\, he\n19:3919 minutes\, 39 secondsI think he did 44 films in his career.\n19:4619 minutes\, 46 secondsAnd this right here is what's left of his film collection. I believe this is 15\n19:5519 minutes\, 55 secondsof his films. Um\, Within Our Gates is one. I did wat ch that one. It's actually\n20:0220 minutes\, 2 secondsvery good. Um\, thi s was done in 1920 and it's 73 minutes long\, but that one again covers th ose themes of migration. Um\,\n20:1520 minutes\, 15 secondsand actually on e of the things that he focused on in that film was a woman's ability to c hoose and move freely. Um\,\n20:2520 minutes\, 25 secondsso if you haven't get this collection\, check that film out. But again\,\n20:3320 minutes\, 33 secondshis films really spoke to the community. Okay? And\n20:4020 min utes\, 40 secondswhen you think about how come so many of his films were l ost\, how come we don't have any of Dudley or Fosters's work\,\n20:4820 mi nutes\, 48 secondsit's not because they didn't matter.\n20:5220 minutes\, 52 secondsIt's because preservation follows power.\n20:5820 minutes\, 58 s econdsThink of it this way. How many how many films can you think of that are when\n21:0421 minutes\, 4 secondstheir their titles are called it's li ke oh yes this is pinnacle great film th\n21:1221 minutes\, 12 secondsthis goes down in film history this is a must-see film this is you know\n21:18 21 minutes\, 18 secondsdefinitely something that framed or shaped culture um those films are\n21:2721 minutes\, 27 secondsprotected and I'm pretty s ure if you start running them back in your mind.\n21:3121 minutes\, 31 sec ondsWhen I when I hear it\, I think of um like the Woody Allen films\, Mar tin Scorsesei films. People will hold those\n21:3821 minutes\, 38 secondsi n high standards. Those films by those uh writer\, directors\, producers w ill be\n21:4621 minutes\, 46 secondsupheld and preserved. We'll have them forever.\n21:5121 minutes\, 51 secondsUm they're protected\,\n21:5521 minu tes\, 55 secondsthey're preserved\, and they're celebrated. Film history i sn't neutral\,\n22:0222 minutes\, 2 secondsit's curated.\n22:0522 minutes\ , 5 secondsJust kind of let that sit with you for a minute.\n22:1122 minut es\, 11 secondsEven though Oscar Mako doesn't get mentioned at as much in film conversations\,\n22:1822 minutes\, 18 secondsthere are many beneficia ries of the road that he built. Um\, again\, think about Ava Duivere\,\n22 :2722 minutes\, 27 secondsIssa Ray\, Jordan Peele. Um\, they all have owne rship archives of their own\n22:3522 minutes\, 35 secondswork. Um they've done things like they build on smaller platforms first and\n22:4222 minute s\, 42 secondsthen present like it's you know she started with um Awkward Black Girl and\n22:5022 minutes\, 50 secondsrolled that into a television series eventually. And you have Jordan Peele um\n22:5622 minutes\, 56 seco ndswho he has narrative control over his work. he can decide these themes and even if people don't get it\, he's not\n23:0523 minutes\, 5 secondsloc ked in again to being a stereotypical um filmmaker where he can only focus on the hardships\n23:1423 minutes\, 14 secondsof black life. No\, he gets into some real cerebral stuff. Okay. Um and and\n23:2323 minutes\, 23 sec ondsthis isn't important. He he didn't choose he didn't chase Hollywood. H e he was well aware that\n23:3123 minutes\, 31 secondsthey're not going to let me into those gates.\n23:3523 minutes\, 35 secondsI have to create my own path. He built endurance.\n23:4223 minutes\, 42 secondsSo with that i n mind\, and you can share your thoughts on this down in the comments\,\n2 3:4923 minutes\, 49 secondswhat does it mean to create when the system isn 't built for you? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. What\n23:5823 mi nutes\, 58 secondsdoes it mean to create when the system isn't built for y ou?\n24:0324 minutes\, 3 secondsOscar Mako in film history is not a footno te. He is the foundation\n24:1024 minutes\, 10 secondsfor what we know as the black film industry now.\n24:1624 minutes\, 16 secondsSo tell me again \, share your thoughts on this one. If Oscar Mah were alive today\,\n24:24 24 minutes\, 24 secondswould he join Hollywood or do you think he would st ill continue to build something of his own? Let me know what you think.\n2 4:3424 minutes\, 34 secondsOkay.\n24:3624 minutes\, 36 secondsOne of the t hings that I keep coming back to with Oscar Mako is that he didn't want to be validated.\n24:4224 minutes\, 42 secondsHe wasn't worried about being on um the Paramount Star system. He wasn't\n24:5024 minutes\, 50 secondslo oking for the the the awards. He wanted to talk to his people and he did t hat. He didn't wait for permission. He\n24:5824 minutes\, 58 secondsdidn't wait for the resources. He didn't wait for history to catch up. He just c reated.\n25:0725 minutes\, 7 secondsAnd that's what we do here at Movies T hat Move We. That's what we're really about. The stories that move us beca use they remind us of what is possible.\n25:2025 minutes\, 20 secondsSo\, thank you for joining me and spending time with me today. Um\, if this epi sode moved you\, share it with someone who loves film history. And\, you k now\,\n25:3225 minutes\, 32 secondsdon't forget to share\, follow\, subscr ibe to our pages on YouTube and Facebook.\n25:3825 minutes\, 38 secondsYou can find us at Movies That Move Wee.\n25:4325 minutes\, 43 secondsI'm Nay . This has been Movies That Move Wee\, and we'll see you next time. Bye.\n \n\n\n\n MY THOUGHTS\n\n 2:44 thank you for saying it started in New York city\, many don't know that. \n\n 5:23 I wonder what zukor will think to paramount today\n\n 5:58 Lamel made\, Universal city\, so in the end\, the movie industry moved west to get as far from Edison or New York City as p ossible.\n\n 6:37 Fox created the proper business model\, you need to own theaters to make money.\n\n 6:55 Mayer supported the star system.\n\n 7:07 Mary Pickford was connected. \n\n 8:37  good point on infrastructure.  \n\n 10:46 thanks for informing about his mom who was a philosophical adhe rent of booker t Washington\, thus he supported black strength in his film s\, but it wasn't anti white as much as anti \"negative behavior\"\n\n 12: 27 I knew Micheaux self published\, in Japan called Doujinshi\, but I love hearing it. \n\n 13:17 good point\, like booker t Washington\, he wasn't trying to comfort whites or blacks\, but telling the truth while supporti ng black empowerment.\n\n 14:17 William d foster [ https://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/William_D._Foster ] \, Sherman h Dudley\, theater owners booking as sociation toba [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_H._Dudley ] \n\n 1 7:23 thank you for mentioning PAul Robeson started with an OScar Micheaux film. \n\n 18:49 and also integrated. The key is not merely showing Black positive lives\, but showing black positive lives while in the environmen t of the USA. \n\n\n\n my comment\n\n thank you for mentioning PAul Robes on started with an OScar Micheaux film. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo dy_and_Soul_(1925_film) ] \n\n hahaha Sinners! well done. \n\n and spenc er williams [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blood_of_Jesus ] \n\n Thi nking on Nollywood\, I wonder. As a Booker T Washington philosophical adhe rent\, he would be pro USA. But\, when you look at Nollywood\, to be blunt \, it is the biggest Black film industry in humanity. Bigger than the blac k film industry in south america/north america/southern asia.\n\n Posse/Da ughters of the Dust/Within Our Gates/ Emitai/ Ceddo are the first films th at come to my mind with your question of films that need to be preserved.  Now I want to say I am lucky\, I remember seeing Within Our Gates when i t was first refurbished. A black film organization exist in harlem that sh ared it. and I will tell you that most of the people in that showing were black. They existed in the Adam Clayton Powell state office building.\n\n What does it mean to create when the system/environment is opposed to you as a creator or anything you create?\n\n hmmmm\,I always say the following \, growing up as a kid\, I recall so many books about black fantasy\, not just history. Many black people... descended of enslaved or not\,  can re call biographies. And nothing is wrong with biographies. But I recall as a very little boy\, thick books on black dos mythology\, Haitian mythology\ , African myths\, fables. I didn't just grow up learning about Madame CJ W alker side Malcolm side KWame Nkrumah side Ida B Wells...I learned about H igh John\, The Devils Daughter\, John Henry\, Brer Rabbit. My point being\ , creating is a way to continue your heritage\, what you carry side who yo u are. And if you don't create\, you risk your heritage dying and future c ultures\, what people grow\, being absent. \n\n Creating is everything wh en it comes to artistic expression of self. \n\n When you create in an en vironment opposed to you creating\, it is more than just an artistic chall enge. Creating in an environment supporting you creating is a blissful thi ng. Underrated often in how valuable it is\, how emboldening it is. When y ou look at white film makers you see this. Whites could present their fals e narratives of the south \, as supported creators. But when you are not s upported in the environment you live in\, you are making a specific statem ent. Said specific statement is\, even though you are against me.. you hav e more power than me...  I exist and I will not cower or delete my identi ty because I have impotencies. \n\n It is interesting\, because someone l ike Marcus Garvey will say it is better to find a supportive environment t han create in an unsupportive one. and I concur to garvey\, he is correct. It is unwise to create ... exist\, in an environment opposed to you. \n\ n But what Micheaux displays\, what all black filmmakers in the USA displa y\, is what W.E.B. Dubois/ Booker T Washington/ Frederick Douglass all emb odied or worked for. That even though a passion/suffering will happen when one creates in an environment opposed to one self\, it is more valuable t o create in an environment opposed to you creating to define not only your self but to make a call\, legally or militaristically impotent as it may b e\, to demand change to the environment that opposes.  And that call has a power/value that can reach to a future with greater impotency than milit aries or laws. \n\n If Oscar Micheaux were alive today would he join Holl ywood or would he do his own?\n\n Micheaux would be independent. He would be an independent creator. I think he would also embrace internationalism in all earnest. I think he would learn languages to be into the film indus tries that don't speak English. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n COMMENTARIES\n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-have-you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar -micheaux/#findComment-80617\n\n\n\n osted just now\n\n\n\n @aka Contrari an Micheaux never did mammy figures or tragic mulattoes or righteous reve rend figures\, in any of his films i saw. he did evil tricksters\, but the y were rarely pantomime and he did romantic leads\, but they were human me n. \n\n\n\n Check out within our gates in the main post\, it is free to v iew \, you will see\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-ha ve-you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComment-80622\n\n\n\ n osted just now\n\n\n\n @aka Contrarian \n\n\n\n well you know that mos t of Marcheaux's films \, over ninety percent \, have never been seen by a nyone alive.  So unfortunately\, we only have a small section of films to view\, and of the ones that are around today don't show those characteriz ations. I am not even certain all of Marcheaux's films are known. MAny hav e cited a list but ... unfortunately\, absent a time machine\, marcheaux's work like black descended of enslaved history from the early nineteen hun dreds to fourteen ninety two is eternally incomplete. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Yes\, all the black pantomime characters come from white theater. Jim Cro w itself is a pantomime character. Before movies\, theater plays plus reco rded music was the prime media tools and were very commercial. Race music was huge\, al jolsten was a white jew but the larger industry of race musi c/race theater\, which had black writers like joplin\, was huge in the uni ted states of america. Such that when films come about they took the panto mime black characters from stage and music of the late eighteen hundreds\, and put them on screen.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n The interesting historical pro cess for me is the analogous existence of Black fictional slave works\, li ke clotel linked below\, alongside the black pantomime. \n\n\n\n The blac k late 1800s fiction is of fictional slave narratives. High John was still popular as a fable\, and high john's nemesis is literally Massa\, a white man with bone white skin with bone white clothes. Clotel to me is a ficti onal account but a pure indictment on the white populace of the usa. To re state\, black late eighteen hundreds fiction arguably makes pantomime whit e villains/criminals/baddies. Oscar Micheaux emitted the vibe of the black written fictional slave narratives.\n\n\n\n The white late 1800s fiction is of fictional slaver narratives. The films birth of a nation\, gone with the wind\, song of the south all reflect late eighteen hundreds white fic tional slaver fiction literally made as a reply to black late 1800s fictio nal slave narratives. \n\n\n\n And yes\, in modernity\, both late 1800s g enres are no longer highly read or known or ... majority popular.\n\n\n\n Both fictions were highly popular among the phenotypical groups they were made for with some crossover fans but blacks seemed to dislike the black f ictional slave narratives as a genre. Whites slowly lost taste with the wh ite fictional slaver narrative. \n\n\n\n The question is why did Blacks d islike the black fictional slave narrative genre. Arguably the first fisca lly successful genre in the usa.\n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/ 496-clotel-or-the-presidents-daughter-a-narrative-of-slave-life-in-the-uni ted-states-by-william-well-brown/\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/ blogs/entry/495-le-mulâtre-from-victor-séjour-two-versions-split-by-an-e ssay/\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-have- you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComment-80636\n\n\n\n o sted just now\n\n\n\n @ProfD \n\n\n\n   3 hours ago\, ProfD said:\n\ n\n\n Films depicting slavery aren't going to be very popular.  Mainly be cause it des not make people feel better about themselves. \n\n\n\n  \n\ n\n\n Entertainment is a form of escapism not intended to cause depression .\n\n\n\n You sound like a very good friend of mine\, a director\, he alwa ys says\, entertainment is to escape and I always tell him hogwash. I have never felt that way with entertainment\, especially growing up. I have ne ver wanted to be anyone but me\, I like myself. II have never wanted to li ve anywhere than the harlem of yore that is now long gone.  Now I admit\, maybe having a loving home with both my parents in a small section of har lem that was happy/peaceful/black empowered meant I didn't feel bad about my home or the local area I live in the world. and thus no need to escape. As a brother of mine said\, to a parent\, maybe he is happy at home. \n\ n\n\n It took me years to comprehend how fortunate I was. If anything the fact that so many people in the usa\, a country whose majority populace in modernity is descended on uninvited or unwanted people from the first peo ples who came to this country to be happy as they were unhappy wherever th ey were from\, find escapism through entertainment says alot about the abi lity of immigrants to find happiness in the usa. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n When I first saw within our gates I wasn't depressed\, I was interested. When I read poetry or stories in my contest/ challenges I am not looking to esc ape or be made to smile\, I want to comprehend what the artists is saying. When I look at music\, I never forget\, mahalia jackson saying she would rather sing gospel than the blues cause she would rather be uplifted than sad and ... I call feces on that. I love black music\, all of it\, from va rious corners of the world and all the genres born in the land that is tod ay the united states of america. Not all blues is sad. And mahalia should had known that. But\, to your point Profd\, mahalia jackson was making the same case \, saying blues music is the same as fictional slave narratives \, too sad\, too negative\, thus the need to escape\, the truth\, escape t he things people don't want to hear or read or see because they remind the m of reality that they don't want to deal with. Better to sing gospel\, an d not see the truth of the usa or your peoples place in it. Better to see the huxtable clan whom have none of the problems ninety percent of black p eople have than to see sanford and son. Even though as red fox said correc tly\, all black shows are dishonest\, including sanford. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\ n\n But then\, we have in the same black populace\, black people saying ho w black people need to want to be president and ceo and all of this stuff. I think the entertainment black people like over the years is telling to our mental states as a collective. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Thank you for your answer\, I think \, your 100% correct. I didn't want to face the answer i s as simple as dismissal of certain aspects in the arts... maybe my varian ce is i look at things as the arts not exactly entertainment\, if somethin g I find funny happens I will laugh but I don't need to laugh de facto ... anyway\, I think its interesting. \n\n\n\n PRofd\, isn't it a thoughtful dichotomy. Black people in majority have never been happy in the usa or t he european colonies that preceded it \, at any time including modernity\, and yet\, blacks went from enjoying fictional slave narratives as the mos t popular black fiction\, to now in modernity not wanting any mention of e nslavement in any fiction. The same black people who will say love the usa and their forebears died for them to be president\, will then dismiss see ing enslaved to whites\, black children tortured by whites in media. To me \, that says they are lying to themselves. I start with myself\, if I didn 't know any black history as a child\, my parents for whatever reason didn 't tell me the truth\, provide me books with the truth \, and I was just p resented escapisms\, I imagine my whole stance toward the usa would be dif ferent today than what it is. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n As a tutor I always tol d the children the truth\, about everything. And this post has made me thi nk about some of the other adults one time. I didn't think on it then but now I see why they looked at me a certain way... Thank you again. .. I rea lize now how many black people don't get black truth in their fiction\, in their learning. It seems like many black adults want black children to be adults\, circa twenty\, before black truth is given... and this isn't som ething derived from whites\, this is a black heritage. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\ n I must admit \, this topic has aided me in something\, hmm thank you\n\n \n\n  \n\n\n\n   3 hours ago\, ProfD said:\n\n\n\n Well\, the archaeo logists had to dig up Within Our Gates from a Spanish copy of the film.   They had to edit to clean up/fix &\; translate it back to English.  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Do you know the spanish subtitle for Within our gates is La Negra\, the black woman. It is so basic\, and a little crude and yet telling. Though I must admit the real story is how a copy of the film fou nd its way to somewhere in spain. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n @aka Contrarian\n\n \n\n  \n\n\n\n   3 hours ago\, aka Contrarian said:\n\n\n\n @richardm urray: this same TV channel that I mentioned watching (back in the 1960's) showed old black movies from the past that did feature the stereo-typical black characters I mentioned. That's how l became aware of them. And they were \"talkie\" movies\, not pantomimed\,  filmed during the late 1920s and early 1930s by black movie producers\, lesser known than Oscar Marchea ux.\n\n\n\n Incidentally\, the acting was very amateurish and stilted\, th e sound and camera work of poor quality. Even so\, they were treasures whi ch I hope are stored away in vaults somewhere. \n\n\n\n well yes I know w hat you speak. That is why i mentioned scott joplin\, i love his rag works \, but he did race music and it was very financially profitable for him. M y point being... The hsitory of black comedians of the usa warrants a whol e history section in the history of entertainment.  You have whites who h istorically are most entertained by blacks or whites mocking blacks... imm itation/bufoonery/jestering... the cakewalk started on plantations with bl ack people mocking whites for a piece of cake. So whites historically love to be entertained\, ala\, made to laugh by blacks in the usa. Then you ha ve especailly in the jim crow era\, 1865 to 1980\, blacks who increasingly want to escape as Profd said correctly. This leads to black entertainers developing to serve both audiences an interesting style. magical bufoonery . But yes\, Michaeux was an outlier\, but he also owned his own more than most black entertainers/filmmakers. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n @admin \n\n\n\n please share what you think after you view it\, I want to know.\n\n\n\n   \n\n\n\n URL- only an excerpt\n\n\n\n 'Within Our Gates': The only copy of the oldest African-American film was hidden in Spain as 'La negra' | Cult ure | EL PAÍS\n\n\n\n https://elpais.com/cultura/2021-11-09/la-unica-copi a-de-la-pelicula-afroamericana-mas-antigua-se-encontraba-en-espana-escondi da-como-la-negra.html\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Wayback machine full version\n\n\ n\n https://web.archive.org/web/20211109050628/https://elpais.com/cultura/ 2021-11-09/la-unica-copia-de-la-pelicula-afroamericana-mas-antigua-se-enco ntraba-en-espana-escondida-como-la-negra.html\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n The only copy of the oldest African-American film was hidden in Spain as 'La negra' \n\n\n\n 'Within Our Gates'\, the original title of Oscar Micheaux's film released in 1920\, was kept at the Filmoteca\, where it will be screened t omorrow\, Wednesday\, and was returned to the United States in the ninetie s\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n A moment from the film 'La negra'\, directed by Oscar M icheaux and released in 1920.\n\n\n\n Elsa Fernández-Santos\n\n\n\n Madri d - 08 Nov 2021 - 03:53 CET\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n In a letter dated July 23\, 1979\, one of the highest authorities on African-American cinema\, T homas Cripps\, expressed his enthusiasm to one of the heads of the Spanish Film Archive\, Catherine Gautier\, for what seemed to be the discovery of a lost relic of the history of cinema. Gautier\, a legendary programmer f or more than four decades\, had shown him the copy weeks earlier in Madrid and Cripps had come to the conclusion that the material could correspond to Within Our Gates\, by the pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. The film had been born as a response to the racism of D. W. Griffith's T he Birth of a Nation\, but neither whites nor blacks liked it. After its premiere in Chicago\, it began to be censored or ignored until its only fo ur copies were lost. One of them\, however\, travelled to Spain in the fif ties where it was preserved under the title La negra or La negressa.\n\ n\n\n After traveling to Madrid and seeing the material in a moviola\, Cri pps informed Gautier that it could be three different titles by Micheaux i n which actors\, \"a black informant\" and the obsession with the culture of lynching\, something recurrent in his films since he himself had witnes sed a famous case as a child\, that of Leo Frank\, a young Jew who was the victim of a human pack that accused him of the murder of a minor whom he never killed.\n\n\n\n The three films were The Gunsaulus Mystery\, from 1921\, Lem Hawkins' Confession\, from 1935 or\, the one that finally was \, the oldest of all\, Within Our Gates\, released on January 12\, 1920. Considered a National Asset\, the film rescued in Spain is available on the internet\, and can be seen tomorrow Wednesday as part of a cycle organ ized by the Filmoteca and the Reina Sofía entitled\, Black Films Matter . After a long process\, La negra passed into the hands of the American Film Institute. In 1993\, it was restored by the Library of Congress\, re turning the intertitles from Spanish to English and\, with the help of som e of Micheaux's books\, reinterpreting the dialogues in slang. \"We did an exchange for Sierra de Teruel [by André Malraux\, with a screenplay by Max Aub]\,\" recalls Catherine Gautier. \"I was in charge of relations wi th the other film libraries\, where we looked for materials that we didn't have by Buñuel. We sent the first positive test to the United States in 1988. The internegative\, a year later. They were excited\, the film becam e a success.\"\n\n\n\n Micheaux was attracted to interracial conflicts and used to reverse roles in his films. In Within Our Gates\, it is a gossip y servant who causes the misunderstanding that ends with an older and inno cent marriage on the gallows. They are the adoptive parents of the protago nist of the film\, a mulatto\, the black woman of the title\, played by Ev elyn Peers. The young woman has had the privilege of studying and in the f irst shot of the film\, she appears dressed in white and reading in a flir tatious living room in a city in the north of the United States. She is a black woman with privileges\, who defends the right to education and the v ote of her own but who hides a traumatic past. The entire final part of th e film is a long and dramatic flashback in the Mississippi Delta. There\ , on the plantation where their adoptive parents lived\, the protagonist h elps them add and subtract their savings so that they can collect from the boss without being deceived.\n\n\n\n From the beginning of the footage\, Micheaux refers to lynchings\, from which he does not even save the abolit ionist North. The owner of the plantation is presented as a tyrant\, hated by whites and blacks\, to whom his slanderous and drunken servant goes wi th stories of the other blacks who aspire to have an education. In the fil m they try to lynch four people\, the only one who escapes death is a chil d\, the protagonist's younger brother\, who manages to flee. The noose aro und the neck is only explicitly seen in a dream of the gossipy servant\, w ho also ends up beaten by the mob. The terrible sequence of the old couple executed closes with an ellipsis in which we only see how the rope on whi ch they have been hanged is cut. To top off the horror\, there is also an attempted rape\, of such realism that actress Evelyn Peers remembered the sequence years later as the best and most brutal of her career. It is in t his attempted rape that the origins of the character will be clarified\, w ho her real father was and why she\, unlike others\, had agreed to an educ ation.\n\n\n\n Churches and film clubs\n\n\n\n Within Our Gates was relea sed in Chicago and Detroit in 1920\, but the screenings began to be increa singly conflicting and the film stopped circulating in the main market to move only in churches and film clubs. Micheaux's style\, who went on to sh oot 40 more films always on the margins of the industry\, is intense and a t the same time sloppy\, a disjointed editing that for some analysts respo nds to the style of improvised jazz. In any case\, the film we know today is incomplete. The nitrate copy that arrived in Spain in 1956 was sold to the Filmoteca in a lot that includes titles such as La cabrita tira al mo nte\, Pilar Guerra or a short film by Félix el Gato. Its price was 4\,00 0 pesetas. \"The Filmoteca bought the nitrate copy from Manuel Rabanal Tay lor\, who was national head of the SEU film clubs\,\" explains Laura Carri llo Caminal\, head of the Documentation and Cataloguing Service. \"Subsequ ently\, in 1961\, the Arroyo laboratories were commissioned to produce a n egative duplicate and a new 35 mm copy on acetate support\, which was a no n-flammable support and therefore safer. These commissions to the laborato ry were\, and are\, common in the Filmoteca as part of its conservation po licy. The original copy is not preserved\, it would probably be lost becau se it is in poor condition.\"\n\n\n\n Writer\, director\, producer and dis tributor\, the figure of Micheaux has not ceased to gain relevance in rece nt times. The recently opened Academy Museum in Hollywood\, in Los Angele s\, has made questionable museological decisions by minimizing the figure of the great patriarch of cinema\, D. W. Griffith\, for the Southern exalt ation of The Birth of a Nation. While tiptoeing around the man who accord ing to Eisenstein taught everything \"to everyone\"\, author of Broken Li lies or Intolerance\, the focus is on Micheaux's work and his cinema th rough extensive documentation that situates the context in which Within O ur Gates was shot and released and why it is considered a response to rac ism in The Birth of a Nation\, whose premiere in 1915 provoked protests from the African-American community.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \"Micheau x's importance as the first great African-American filmmaker cannot be und erestimated\,\" explains Zoran Sinobad\, curator and head of film at the L ibrary of Congress. \"Not only was he the first African-American to direct feature films\, but he was also the first whose films were screened in wh ite theaters. This is especially important in the context of his work's co mmitment to racial injustice\, a theme that was virtually non-existent on American screens in the 1920s. Micheaux was a groundbreaking filmmaker who se films challenged the stereotypical representations of black men and wom en that were prevalent in Hollywood at the time and provided a uniquely bl ack perspective on race and life in the United States.\"\n\n\n\n The Blac k Films Matter cycle that La Filmoteca and the Museo Reina Sofía presen t this month and which will last through December and January\, aims to \" give voice and space\" to a series of filmmakers whose works have hardly b een seen in Spain or Europe. [ https://www.museoreinasofia.es/actividad/b lack-films-matter  ] The films of \"pioneers such as Micheaux and Zora Ne ale Hurston\; champions of race films such as Spencer Williams\; revolut ionaries such as Melvin van Peebles\, Charles Burnett or Cheryl Dunye\". A ll of them\, fundamental names in the construction of an identity whose st ruggle to break with stereotypes was born in a film that chance brought to Spain.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Museo reina sofia of spain Black Films MAtter\n \n\n\n  \n\n\n\n BLACK FILMS MATTER (1920-2020)\nDate and time\nHeld on 1 0 Nov 2021\nYes\, black film matters. From the oldest surviving feature fi lm directed by a black filmmaker\, Within Our Gates (1920) by Oscar Michea ux\, to the frenetic contemporary proposals of Arthur Jafa in the Trump er a\, this cycle proposes a journey through the American independent black f ilm and does so in an anthological retrospective organized by the Reina So fía Museum and the Spanish Film Archive that\, For the first time\, it br ings together a century of films directed solely by African-American filmm akers.\n\nWith this essential condition\, the cycle seeks to avoid the rac ial stereotypes in representation that characterized\, in the past\, the w ork of legendary black actors and actresses. Some thirty sessions – duri ng two months of programming – claim and tell another great story of thi s medium in the United States\, which places at the center the subaltern a nd resistant gaze of the black minority. A story that obeys one of the mos t urgent and necessary desires throughout an entire century: that of the s truggle for life. As filmmaker Arthur Jafa and philosopher Fred Moten remi nd us\, it is possible to make film noir with the same power\, beauty and alienation of black music. Both have a common aspect: not obeying rules bu t undoing them and recombining them in an improvisatory logic that animate s blues\, jazz\, hip-hop or house\, but also the images and sounds of blac k film. \n\nThe route cannot\, therefore\, be traced chronologically and linearly\, but in a spiral and with leaps back and forth\, in a syncopated composition that governs the dialogues between the projections of both ve nues. The programming\, far from the canon or the emblem\, proposes a stor y based on film manifestations that do not deal externally or observationa lly with the black population\, but are made by this same community that s hows their way of life and unique experience. BLACK FILMS MATTER (1920-202 0) is\, therefore\, a cycle of singular films with resonances and confluen ces between them\, rather than a theoretical program. It consists of vario us sessions that\, as units of meaning\, give underlying shape to this bea t of films. In this way\, archaeology is made of the pioneers of cinema\, including the films of the first African-American directors in history\, O scar Michaux and Zora Neale Hurston. These are the so-called race films of the early twentieth century\, an alternative industry that developed in t he silent period and that still remains unknown due to its enormous potent ial for destabilization. In this way\, Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates i s an anti-racist response to the aberrant xenophobic monumentality of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915)\, a milestone in the orthodox his tories of cinema.\n\nAfter this period\, we connect with the emergence of black consciousness and the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s\ , characterized by the insurgency of the Black Power movement and the LA R ebellion\, collectives where film giants such as Charles Burnett\, Melvin van Peebles or Billy Woodberry stand out. In turn\, the politics of differ ence unite feminism\, blackness\, and queer identities in the work of Juli e Dash\, Cheryl Dunye\, and Cauleen Smith.\n\nThere is also room for a pop ular street cinema in the cycle\, which addresses the neighborhood as terr itory and battlefield\, as is the case with the films of Spike Lee\, Gordo n Parks\, Michael Schulz or John Singleton\, aimed at a new specifically b lack mass audience\, a \"counter-audience\" that transforms American enter tainment cinema.\n\nThe sessions by contemporary artists\, which feature K evin Jerome Everson\, Arthur Jafa and Kara Walker\, function as counterpoi nts – regardless of a chronology – that return to foundational moments of black film\, such as the origins of the pioneers or the revolts of the 1960s and 1970s.\n\nThe program seeks to reintegrate these historical gen ealogies into a contemporary Black consciousness that incorporates the pas t while being able to manifest today\, in unison with one of the great soc ial movements and hopes of our time\, Black Lives Matter\, that Black live s (and the cinema that inhabits them) matter.\n\nProgram\nWednesday\, Nove mber 10\, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second pass: session 30. Screening and closin g concert with The Silent Entertainers Band. Thursday\, January 20 and Sat urday\, January 22\, 2022 / Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 1. Pioneers I\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThursday\, November 11\, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Sec ond screening: Wednesday\, December 29\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Spanish Film A rchive\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini B uilding\, Auditorium\n\nSession 2. Pioneers II\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFrid ay\, November 12\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Saturday\, Decembe r 18\, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Museo Re ina Sofía\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 3. Kara Walker\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSaturday \, November 13\, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Friday\, December 17 \, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / Second screeni ng: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\n\nSession 4. Mel vin Van Peebles\n\n\n\n\nSunday\, November 14\, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Second screening: Wednesday\, December 15\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Spanish Film Archi ve\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Build ing\, Auditorium\n\nSession 5. L.A. Rebellion I. Don Amis and Charles Burn ett\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMonday\, November 15\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screen ing: Sunday\, December 5\, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Español a website / Museo Reina Sofía\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium / Second s creening: Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 6. Julie Dash\n\n\n\ n\nTuesday\, November 16\, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Monday\, D ecember 27\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / Seco nd screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\n\nSess ion 7. Pioneers III\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWednesday\, November 17\, 2021 - 6:00 p .m. / Second screening: Friday\, December 3\, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Museo Reina Sofía\, Sabatini Building\, Au ditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 8 . Kevin Jerome Everson\n\n\n\n\n\nThursday\, November 18\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m . / Second screening: Tuesday\, December 7\, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Museo Reina Sofía\, Sabatini Building\, Aud itorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 9. Pioneers IV\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFriday\, November 19\, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Second screening: Thursday\, December 23\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive \, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Buildin g\, Auditorium\n\nSession 10. Pioneers V\n\n\n\n\nSaturday\, November 20\, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Friday\, December 10\, 2021 - 6:00 p .m. Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía M useum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\n\nSession 11. Gordon Parks\n\n\n\n \nSunday\, November 21\, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Second screening: Sunday\, Nov ember 28\, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\n\nSession 12. Michael Schultz\n\n\n\n\nMonday\, November 22\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Se cond screening: Thursday\, December 9\, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmo teca Española website Museo Reina Sofía\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 13. Pione ers VI\n\n\n\n\nTuesday\, November 23\, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screenin g: Sunday\, December 5\, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Ci nema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditor ium\n\nSession 14. Pioneers VII\n\n\n\n\nWednesday\, November 24\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Saturday\, December 4\, 2021 - check schedul e on the Filmoteca Española website Museo Reina Sofía\, Sabatini Buildin g\, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSes sion 15. Bill Gunn\n\n\n\n\nThursday\, November 25\, 2021 - 7:30 p.m. / Se cond screening: Monday\, December 13\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archi ve\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Build ing\, Auditorium\n\nSession 16. Ivan Dixon\n\n\n\n\nSaturday\, November 27 \, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Thursday\, December 23\, 2021 - ch eck schedule on the website of the Spanish Film Archive Reina Sofía Museu m\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium / Second screening: Spanish Film Archiv e\, Doré Cinema\n\nSession 17. Larry Bullard and Carolyn Y. Johnson\n\n\n \n\nSaturday\, November 27\, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Wednesda y\, December 22\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / S econd screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\n\nS ession 18. Spike Lee\n\n\n\n\nSunday\, November 28\, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Se cond screening: Sunday\, December 19\, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. Spanish Film Arch ive\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Buil ding\, Auditorium\n\nSession 19. John Singleton\n\n\n\n\nMonday\, November 29\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Saturday\, December 11\, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website Museo Reina Sofía\, Sa batini Building\, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española\, Cin e Doré\n\nSession 20. Stephen Winter\n\n\n\n\nTuesday\, November 30\, 202 1 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Wednesday\, December 8\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m . Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Mus eum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\n\nSession 21. Cheryl Dunye\n\n\n\n\n \n\nThursday\, December 2\, 2021 – 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Sunday\ , December 26\, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website M useo Reina Sofía\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium / Second screening: Fil moteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 22. L.A. Rebellion II. Haile Geri ma\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFriday\, December 3\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screen ing: Tuesday\, December 28\, 2021 - check schedule on the website of the S panish Film Archive Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium / Second screening: Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema\n\nSession 23. L.A. Rebellion III. Larry Clark\n\n\n\n\n\nMonday\, December 6\, 2021 - 6:00 p .m. / Second screening: Friday\, December 10\, 2021 - check schedule on th e website of Filmoteca Española Museo Reina Sofía\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 24. Cauleen Smith\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTuesday\, December 21\, 2021 - check sched ule on the Spanish Film Archive website / Second screening: Friday\, Janua ry 14\, 2022 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / Second scre ening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\n\nSession 25. Feminist Short Films\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWednesday\, December 1\, 20 21 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Second screening: Saturday\, December 11\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive\, Cine Dor é / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditoriu m\n\nSession 26. Arthur Jafa\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTuesday\, December 14\, 2021 - check schedule on the Spanish Film Archive website / Second screening: Sa turday\, January 15\, 2022 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\ n\nSession 27. Kathleen Collins\n\n\n\n\nSunday\, December 12\, 2021 - 12: 00 / Second screening: Wednesday\, December 22\, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website Museo Reina Sofía\, Sabatini Building\, A uditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española\, Cine Doré\n\nSession 28. L.A. Rebellion IV. Billy Woodberry\n\n\n\n\n\nSunday\, December 19\, 2 021 - check schedule on the Spanish Film Archive website / Second screenin g: Monday\, December 20\, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Ci nema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditor ium\n\nSession 29. Gordon Parks\n\n\n\n\nThursday\, January 20\, 2022 - ch eck schedule on the Spanish Film Archive website / Second screening: Satur day\, January 22\, 2022 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive\, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum\, Sabatini Building\, Auditorium\n\n Session 30. Screening and closing concert with The Silent Entertainers Ban d\n\n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n https://vimeo.com/640315746?fl=pl&\;fe=sh\n\n\ n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n 03142026\n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc /topic/12582-have-you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComme nt-80649\n\n\n\n osted just now\n\n\n\n @aka Contrarian \n\n\n\n   14 hours ago\, aka Contrarian said:\n\n\n\n @richardmurrayI watched  \"Wit hin Our Gates\" and fully  appreciated it for what it was. In fact\, it i nspired me to do some research on Oscar Micheaux because I was both curio us and confused about him\, even misspelling his name. I was\, however\, v aguely familiar with him which was why I was of the opinion that it must'v e been his movies that I was seeing quite a while back on a local TV chann el that did not run them in prime time but instead put them on during the early afternoon\, almost as if to fill in empty air space like the wrestli ng matches and The Liberace Show did back during the early days of TV.\n\n \n\n This would mean that my seeing  these old films must've been back in the 1950s.\n\n\n\n Anyway\, I learned\, to my surprise\, that Oscar Miche aux was born in 1884 in Metropolis\, Illinois\, a town I know of because I had friends from there\, and that he died in 1951\, so he was alive duri ng my life time.\n\n\n\n I watched a couple of short YouTube videos about him and have concluded that at least some of those sound movies I was watc hing back then were ones \n\n\n\n produced by him later in his career.\n\ n\n\n Finally\, imo\, some of the stereotypes I previously mentioned did a ppear in Micheaux's \"Beyond the Gates\". Certainly Sylvia Landry\, the lo velorn heroine of  \"Within Our Gates\, was a \"tragic mulatto\" whose re al father was white and whose black adoptive parents were lynched\, her ad optive and nurturing mother\, Mattie\, being a \"Mammy\" figure\, and the wicked Larry\, brother-in-law of Sylvia's cousin\, being a villainous \"Tr ickster\"\, while the tattle tale Ephraim\, was the \"Coon\" figure.  The minister Jacobs\, who ran a school for black children\, represented  the \"Righteous Reverend\"and Dr. Vivian\, who falls in love with Sylvia\, re presented the \"romantic hero\". \n\n\n\n These personifications\, rather than being pantomimed degrading figures\, were transformed in \"Within Ou r Gates\"\, and I suspect the improved versions\, like the film itself\, w ere used to counteract the negative caricatures that \"The Birth of a Nati on\" depicted.\n\n\n\n My introduction to Micheaux was probably about 70 y ears ago and I'm curious if those films I remember seeing were lost and no longer exist since the claim is being made that this movie is the last of its kind in existence. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Btw\, I also beg to disagree with your classifying the Cakewalk as a form of buffoon mockery. It was ac tually an elegant\, joyful\, high-stepping  dance where couples competed against each other\, with the winner being awarded the prize of a cake!\n\ n\n\n Nor were minstrel shows totally without merit. They show cased sly h umor\, buck dancing and banjo artistry among other things.\n\n\n\n I menti on this because there was a time when black Masons would stage their own m instrel shows and\, having seen one put on by my father's lodge when I was a young girl in the 1940s\, I remember being rather proud that my dad\, w as a member of a barbershop quartet that performed in a show his Masonic l odge staged.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Just some thoughts...\n\n\n\n Expand  \n\ n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Lovely thoughts\, thank you for sharing them:)\n\n\n\n   \n\n\n\n Well use of the word personifications\, in that true persons chan ge are not pantomime. \n\n\n\n Sylvia a true mulatto\, definitely goes th rough trials or tribulations but she isn't tragic cause she wins in the en d. She isn't clotel. \n\n\n\n Mattie is motherly\, in the same way Mammy' s are\, but Mattie is a black woman married to a black man raising a black child... when a black maid is motherly to a white child that is the mammy figure\, it isn't a black woman being motherly to a black child\, that is expected? right? The landrys are both hanged and burned alive for a crime they didn't commit. \n\n\n\n hahaha LArry is the trickster\, I admit he doesn't change. If anything he is the one true caricature. and Micheaux be ing like Pioneer:) one of these law abiding blacks\, criminalizes black st reet people. All of larry's crimes are financial\, none are violent. but y eah\, larry is the pantomime black trickster\, but knowing what I know of micheaux that makes sense. I as a writer don't view black hustlers negativ ely so... \n\n\n\n Efram wasn't the coon for one reason\, in the film\, h e recants his actions in a confession to the audience so to speak. yes\, h e is the prototypical coon figure gestures\, talk and all\, BUT unlike mos t coon figures\, he gets killed by whites\, which is a very rare touch. ev en among black writers\, they rarely give \"black traitors\" aka coons the death that micheax gave efram. \n\n\n\n People remember samuel l jackson 's characters death in django\, but he is murdered by a black man\, django \, Oscar micheaux murders his coon\, efram through the true subjects white s\, displaying the simple truth that whites are the enemy of blacks folks\ , whether the honorable\, loving\, law abiding Landry's or the lying\, sel f hating scheming eframs. But the key is that efram confesses he hates him self\, confesses he is wrong which is very rare in film\, even black writt en films. \n\n\n\n And your correct\, the Rev is the \"righteous reverend \" and Dr..\"good hero\" But at least with the rev. he is actually challen ged. when sylvia rebukes his offer of marriage\, that is a real test that again\, so few righteous reverends have in many stories. to be challenged is key to testing the identity.  but the doctor is an evergood hero:) whi ch ok:)\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n I wish I could see a complete version of symbol fo the unconquered. The partial I placed below. I think it is a response to birth of a nation\, not within our gates. Why do I say this? In a gener al sense\, because all of Micheaux's work involve the south plus black peo ple and they are not like in griffith's film\, they are all partially a re sponse to birth of a nation\, on a mere stylistic point. But in terms of a grarian fantasies\, i argue\, symbol of the unconquered is more of an agra rian fantasy which is what birth of a nation is\, than within our gates.  \n\n\n\n Birth of the nation is dismissive of the usa outside of the south \, in birth of a nation the usa outside of the south\, doesn't functionall y exist. In that way\, within our gates isn't a reply. Within our gates is very much holistic. It is showing black unity between blacks outside the south and to the south. Sylvia makes it where the black school in the sout h will thrive/survive/live but she lives in the north\, has found love in the north\, fled the south because of white terror\, but doesn't ask other black people to leave the south. Within our gates i argue is more holisti c to the usa. that complete nature is absent in birth of a nation. \n\n\n \n But symbol of the unconquered is all about black homesteaders. It is fo cused on a specific area in the usa like birth of a nation. And like birth of a nation has straight messages about certain persons or groups. Wherea s the KKK is heroic supporting the traditions of the south in birth of a n ation\, the kkk is a terrorist illegal operating organization in symbol of the unconquered. whereas \"birth's\" female lead is so negatively biased she can jump off of a cliff to her death rather than be violated. the fema le lead in \"symbol\"fights through wind and rain and storms\, to get her land. can be frightened but will never go to her death from fear. \n\n\n\ n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n yeah\, well \, even though I don't pref er comedy usually\, i think comedy is the art form most in need in the usa at all times\, this countries history doesn't yield to seriousness well.  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n lovely thought\, thank you for sharing them\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n 03152026\n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-have-you-see n-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComment-80716\n\n\n\n osted j ust now\n\n\n\n @Pioneer1 my pleasure\, check out more films and content\ n\n\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/677-oscar-devereaux-micheaux-boo ks-plus-films/\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n @Troy ah cool:) \n\n\n\n some of the e lements of within our gates are still rare to see. a black character who i s publicly antiblack and confesses to it with shame before being killed by nonblacks\, very rare to see //read/hear today in anything with a budget and getting paid to be made\, even among black produced/financed work.\n\n \n\n the relationship between north and south black regions in the usa\, t he lead female character does not like the south for multiple reasons  an d yet still helps the black populace in the south \, I recall I  mentione d in the past how many fiscally wealthy blacks who live outside the former confederacy have never paid for one person to go to one historical black college or universtiy (HBCU) even demanded all the people they have paid c ollege for get money only if they go to a hbcu. \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260310 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR