Word: silents
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...inspired both black and white feature-filmmaking was D.W. Griffith. His 1915 epic "The Clansman," cannily retitled "The Birth of a Nation" after its Los Angeles premiere, became a groundbreaking popular, technical and critical success. The first blockbuster, it was the most widely seen movie of the silent era. In its bold editing and composition of shots, in its alternation of intimate scenes with spectacular battles and a final thrilling chase, the film established a cinematic textbook, a fully formed visual language, for generations of directors. The potent drama of its subject and method stirred President Woodrow Wilson...
...that would allow them to pursue their own visions. And in the 30-plus years of race cinema, there was only one black man with the drive and doggedness to write, produce, direct, finance and distribute his own films. That was Oscar Micheaux, the first black to direct a silent feature, and the first to direct a talkie feature. In so many ways, Micheaux was the D.W. Griffith of race cinema. And also its Edward D. Wood...
...Thus began one of the most bustling, inspiring, preposterous and sustained bursts of misdirected energy in movie history. Over the next 30 years, Micheaux helmed about 23 silent films and 17 talking pictures. A full-service auteur, he typically adapted one of his own novels for the screen, directed it, produced it and released it. He financed the films by showing a previous work and a synopsis of his next project to exhibitors, friends, strangers on the street and the occasional Negro businessman. And when the film was ready, he peddled it theater door to theater door. (Sometimes...
...silent Micheaux films I've seen are not poorly made. And unlike most films aimed at blacks, Micheaux's were movies about blackness (sort of - I'll get to that shortly). The 1925 "Body and Soul," which I discussed in my last That Old Feeling column, has a robust narrative that nearly matches the charismatic presence of Paul Robeson as a preacher who charms, abuses and steals from his congregation of womenfolk. "The Symbol of the Unconquered" (1921) is a rambling, mostly charming love story about a black man who loves a light-skinned black woman but is afraid...
...beat his legs, up and down with rods and sticks until they broke them over the edge. Then they cut him all over with kukris. All the time they shouted, 'Why do you spy? Why did you take our comrades to the police?' Then they asked everyone to be silent and demanded my brother chant their song, that Mao is the best." After about an hour, says Yadav, two men laid his brother on the ground, each gripping an iron rod. "They put one through his stomach and another through his shoulder." The guerrillas then firebombed the house. Yadav says...