Oscar Micheaux is a trailblazing American filmmaker whose name and fandom — including Spike Lee and the late John Singleton — are better known than his groundbreaking films. A festival opening in New York on Friday, May 3, at Film Forum aims to fix that.
Though competition is steep in the New York film space, with 17 films and several curated special events, “Oscar Micheaux and the Birth of Black Independent Cinema” is designed to make history. Seven films on the schedule are new restorations of the original prints. Some screenings will be accompanied by live musical performances, much like when silent films were originally exhibited in the 1910s and 1920s. On May 5, there’s also a tribute for the recently deceased author and filmmaker Pearl Bowser, a pivotal architect of the renaissance Micheaux’s work now enjoys. The lineup also boasts conversations with DJ Spooky (aka Paul Miller), who composed new scores for...
Though competition is steep in the New York film space, with 17 films and several curated special events, “Oscar Micheaux and the Birth of Black Independent Cinema” is designed to make history. Seven films on the schedule are new restorations of the original prints. Some screenings will be accompanied by live musical performances, much like when silent films were originally exhibited in the 1910s and 1920s. On May 5, there’s also a tribute for the recently deceased author and filmmaker Pearl Bowser, a pivotal architect of the renaissance Micheaux’s work now enjoys. The lineup also boasts conversations with DJ Spooky (aka Paul Miller), who composed new scores for...
- 5/2/2024
- by Carole V. Bell
- Indiewire
To say anything in film history is a “first” can be a dubious claim. Not only is film complicated as a medium but so much of its history has been lost. Our picture of cinema is one largely of the movies that have been lucky enough to survive, or the movies that have been considered important or special enough to be preserved. It takes even more effort to find and preserve the history of filmmakers who existed outside the early film studios.
But that effort is exactly what film historian Pearl Bowser undertook, and she is now being honored for it with “The Boom Is Really An Echo: Selections from the Pearl Bowser Media Collection” at Bam.
Bowser’s probably best known as the scholar who revived interest in director Oscar Micheaux and the early days of Black cinema in the ‘70s — an interest that abides to this day with...
But that effort is exactly what film historian Pearl Bowser undertook, and she is now being honored for it with “The Boom Is Really An Echo: Selections from the Pearl Bowser Media Collection” at Bam.
Bowser’s probably best known as the scholar who revived interest in director Oscar Micheaux and the early days of Black cinema in the ‘70s — an interest that abides to this day with...
- 4/21/2024
- by Sarah Shachat
- Indiewire
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Roxy Cinema
Our House of Tolerance 35mm presentation returns on Friday, while a print of the James Dean-led Giant shows this Saturday alongside prints of Twilight and Half Baked; Decoder also screens.
Paris Theater
A 1984 retrospective brings Body Double and a 35mm print of Love Streams.
Japan Society
A two-title retrospective of the legendary Directors Company brings one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s best early films, Bumpkin Soup, and Sogo Ishii’s The Crazy Family.
Anthology Film Archives
“Essential Cinema” brings two early masterpieces by Ozu, while the Quebecois cinema retrospective has its final screenings on Friday; Roy Cohn/Jack Smith shows on Saturday and Sunday.
Film at Lincoln Center
Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day return.
Film Forum
As Le Samouraï plays in a new 4K restoration, an Alain Delon retrospective continues while a Ken Loach series starts.
Roxy Cinema
Our House of Tolerance 35mm presentation returns on Friday, while a print of the James Dean-led Giant shows this Saturday alongside prints of Twilight and Half Baked; Decoder also screens.
Paris Theater
A 1984 retrospective brings Body Double and a 35mm print of Love Streams.
Japan Society
A two-title retrospective of the legendary Directors Company brings one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s best early films, Bumpkin Soup, and Sogo Ishii’s The Crazy Family.
Anthology Film Archives
“Essential Cinema” brings two early masterpieces by Ozu, while the Quebecois cinema retrospective has its final screenings on Friday; Roy Cohn/Jack Smith shows on Saturday and Sunday.
Film at Lincoln Center
Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day return.
Film Forum
As Le Samouraï plays in a new 4K restoration, an Alain Delon retrospective continues while a Ken Loach series starts.
- 4/19/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates is showing June 17 - July 17, 2020.Oscar Micheaux has been hailed as many things: The first Black auteur, a modernist “Czar of Black Hollywood,” and a pioneering independent director whose distinctive style forged new ways of telling stories about the complexities of the Black experience. He was also—quite literally—a pioneer. Born in 1884 as the fifth child of former slaves, Micheaux moved to Chicago as a teenager, where he worked in stockyards and steel mills before setting up a series of small businesses. He lived an itinerant life as a Pullman porter, saving enough money to buy a plot of land in South Dakota. There he set up a thriving homestead, where he lived off the prairie land and wrote novels. Droughts and the break-up of his marriage brought an end to this chapter,...
- 6/17/2020
- MUBI
It's arrived -- thanks in part to a successful Kickstarter campaign, this nearly comprehensive compendium of American 'Race Films' is here in a deluxe Blu-ray presentation. Pioneers of African-American Cinema Blu-ray Kino Classics 1915-1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 952 min. / Street Date July 26, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 99.95 Directed by Richard Norman, Richard Maurice, Spencer Williams and Oscar Micheaux
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Black Cinema History? We didn't hear a peep about any such thing back in film school. Sometime in the 1980s PBS would broadcast a barely watchable (see sample just below) copy of a creaky silent 'race movie' about a 'backsliding' black man in trouble with the law, the Lord and his wife in that order. The cultural segregation has been almost complete. It wasn't until even later that I read articles about a long-extinct nationwide circuit of movie theaters catering to black audiences, wherever the populations were big enough to support the trade.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Black Cinema History? We didn't hear a peep about any such thing back in film school. Sometime in the 1980s PBS would broadcast a barely watchable (see sample just below) copy of a creaky silent 'race movie' about a 'backsliding' black man in trouble with the law, the Lord and his wife in that order. The cultural segregation has been almost complete. It wasn't until even later that I read articles about a long-extinct nationwide circuit of movie theaters catering to black audiences, wherever the populations were big enough to support the trade.
- 8/6/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
I will be a panelist on today’s 1Pm panel titled Who gets to tell the story? Representation, appropriation and distribution of the Black Image. And I’ll be joined by… scholars Tracyann Williams (moderator), Pearl Bowser, Fabio Parasecoli, and Raquel Gates, as well as director, producer and writer Frances Anne Solomon.
All part of a conference here in NYC, taking place on April 8th and 9th, presented by the New School Media Studies and Film faculty, organized by New School faculty and media distribution consultant, Michelle Materre, titled Remixed And Remastered: Defining And Distributing the Black Image In An Era Of Globalization.
Other notables include author and cultural critic Jill Nelson; filmmakers Ava DuVernay, Charles Officer, Thomas Allen Harris, and Regi Allen; scholars Sean Jacobs, and key industry notables including Focus Features’ Africa First Shorts’ Kisha Cameron-Dingle, HBO’s Greg Rhem and National Black Programming Consortium’s Leslie Fields Cruz.
All part of a conference here in NYC, taking place on April 8th and 9th, presented by the New School Media Studies and Film faculty, organized by New School faculty and media distribution consultant, Michelle Materre, titled Remixed And Remastered: Defining And Distributing the Black Image In An Era Of Globalization.
Other notables include author and cultural critic Jill Nelson; filmmakers Ava DuVernay, Charles Officer, Thomas Allen Harris, and Regi Allen; scholars Sean Jacobs, and key industry notables including Focus Features’ Africa First Shorts’ Kisha Cameron-Dingle, HBO’s Greg Rhem and National Black Programming Consortium’s Leslie Fields Cruz.
- 4/9/2011
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
From my inbox (Thanks Alece!):
Some upcoming screening events for my fellow New Yorkers:
First, tonight at 7:30Pm, Harlem Stage (150 Convent Ave in Harlem) is screening St. Clair Bourne’s The Black and the Green, a 1983 documentary chronicling a fact-finding trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland, by 5 black American activists, who found that many Catholics there had been influenced by the civil rights movement. The documentary itself would appear to be pro-ira (Irish Republican Army), but that certainly wasn’t accidental. I should make a connection to another black filmmaker here, be reminding you that 2 years before St. Clair made his documentary, Ira member Bobby Sands died after a 66-day prison hunger strike – an occurrence that was chronicled in Brit Steve McQueen’s stark 2008 film Hunger.
Tickets to the screening are $10.
Second, Us Post office will be unveiling the Oscar Micheaux stamp on June 23rd, at 12Pm, at the...
Some upcoming screening events for my fellow New Yorkers:
First, tonight at 7:30Pm, Harlem Stage (150 Convent Ave in Harlem) is screening St. Clair Bourne’s The Black and the Green, a 1983 documentary chronicling a fact-finding trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland, by 5 black American activists, who found that many Catholics there had been influenced by the civil rights movement. The documentary itself would appear to be pro-ira (Irish Republican Army), but that certainly wasn’t accidental. I should make a connection to another black filmmaker here, be reminding you that 2 years before St. Clair made his documentary, Ira member Bobby Sands died after a 66-day prison hunger strike – an occurrence that was chronicled in Brit Steve McQueen’s stark 2008 film Hunger.
Tickets to the screening are $10.
Second, Us Post office will be unveiling the Oscar Micheaux stamp on June 23rd, at 12Pm, at the...
- 6/9/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.