Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Music Box Theatre, Chicago: 'Within Our Gates,' 'The earliest surviving African-American directed feature film' Saturday, Feb. 9, 12:00 PM



Sergio Mims sends another informative link related to the film Within Our Gates:

Music Box Theatre

Within Our Gates
Saturday, 9 February, 2013 12:00 PM

directed by Oscar Micheaux

The earliest surviving African-American directed feature film, the sole print of this superb race film was discovered in Spain and painstakingly restored by the Library of Congress in 1993.

The emotionally powerful story centers around a black schoolteacher who finds the battle against racism is everywhere when she goes North to raise money for better schools. Seen as a response to D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, the film portrays the contemporary racial situation in the United States during the early twentieth century—the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of blacks to cities of the North and Midwest, and the emergence of the “New Negro”. Shot mostly in Chicago!
Print courtesy of the Library of Congress

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