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| oscar micheaux documentary: Oscar Micheaux and His Circle Charles Musser, Jane Marie Gaines, Pearl Bowser, 2016-03-28 Oscar Micheaux—the most prolific African American filmmaker to date and a filmmaking giant of the silent period—has finally found his rightful place in film history. Both artist and showman, Micheaux stirred controversy in his time as he confronted issues such as lynching, miscegenation, peonage and white supremacy, passing, and corruption among black clergymen. In this important collection, prominent scholars examine Micheaux's surviving silent films, his fellow producers of race films who alternately challenged or emulated his methods, and the cultural activities that surrounded and sustained these achievements. The relationship between black film and both the stage (particularly the Lafayette Players) and the black press, issues of underdevelopment, and a genealogy of Micheaux scholarship, as well as extensive and more accurate filmographies, give a richly textured portrait of this era. The essays will fascinate the general public as well as scholars in the fields of film studies, cultural studies, and African American history. This thoroughly readable collection is a superb reference work lavishly illustrated with rare photographs. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Conquest Oscar Micheaux, 2022-01-11 The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913) is a novel by Oscar Micheaux. Before he became the first Black movie mogul in American history, Micheaux was a homesteader-turned novelist whose passion for storytelling and business acumen were born from a youth of hard work and struggle. The son of a former slave, Micheaux dedicated his life to countering the dominant narratives of American history while inspiring and empowering Black people around the world. “The heavy rains washed the loam from the hills and deposited it on these bottoms. Years ago, when the rolling lands were cleared, and before the excessive rainfall had washed away the loose surface, the highlands were considered most valuable for agricultural purposes, equally as valuable as the bottoms now are.” A Black homesteader named Oscar Devereaux reflects on a life of perseverance. Raised alongside twelve siblings in rural Illinois, he leaves home and family behind to seek a life of fortune and independence. Never one to set limits, Devereaux discovers that no dream is beyond his reach. Dedicated to educator and orator Booker T. Washington, The Conquest was described by its author as the “true story of a negro who was discontented and [of] the circumstances that were the outcome of that discontent.” With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Oscar Micheaux’s The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Writing Himself Into History Pearl Bowser, Louise Spence, 2000 Bowser (specialist in African and African American film) and Louise Spence (media studies, Sacred Heart U.) define and describe the audiences for black films while examining African American film director Micheaux's unique vision and contribution as an artist and novelist and its relation to his work as a filmmaker. With a focus on the first decade of his career, they place his work firmly within his social and cultural milieu, and examine his family background and life experience. They also provide a close textual analysis of his surviving silent films and highlight the rivalry between production companies, dilemmas of assimilation versus a separate cultural identity, and gender and class issues. Contains several b&w photographs.Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only Patrick McGilligan, 2009-10-06 Oscar Micheaux was the Jackie Robinson of film, the black D. W. Griffith: a bigger-than-life American folk hero whose important life story is nearly forgotten today. Now, in a feat of historical investigation and vivid storytelling, one of our greatest film biographers takes on one of the most talented and complex figures in the history of American entertainment. The son of freed slaves, Micheaux grew up in Metropolis, Illinois, then roamed America as a Pullman porter before making his first mark as a homesteader in South Dakota. Disaster and defeat there led him to forge a career publishing a successful series of autobiographical novels. Ever the entrepreneur, when Hollywood failed to bid high enough for film rights to his stories, he answered by forming his own film production company. Going on to produce or direct twenty-two silent and fifteen sound films in his lifetime, Micheaux became the king of the race cinema industry at a time when black-produced films had to scrounge for venues in a segregated society. In this groundbreaking new biography, award-winning film historian Patrick McGilligan offers a vivid and fascinating portrait of this little-known pioneer. Part visionary, part raffish Barnum-like showman, Micheaux was both a maverick filmmaker and an inveterate hustler who used every weapon at his disposal to break the color barrier and thrive in a profession he helped to invent. He made a fortune and lost it again, and launched repeated con games that were followed by public arrests and bankruptcies. He eagerly took credit for the work of others—including his unsung-heroine wife. In his desperate later years, he even sunk to plagiarizing his final novel—a discovery McGilligan reveals here for the first time. In this searching exploration, McGilligan tracks down long-lost financial records, unpublished letters, and unmarked pauper's graves, pinpointing Micheaux's birthplace, his tangled personal life, and the circumstances of his tragic death. The result is an epic that bridges a fascinating period in American history, and offers lessons for anyone who would understand the role of black America in forming the culture of our time. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Homesteader (Western Novel) Oscar Micheaux, 2022-01-04 Jean Baptiste is a hard-working man whose only dream is to make a life for himself in Dakota. However, even as a black pioneer, he is doomed to be separated from the love of his love due to racial laws prohibiting interracial marriages. Thus, to avoid the all-consuming loneliness, he instead decides to get married to Orlean. However, his new father-in-law is a nightmare from hell and although a preacher, all his attention is focused upon him rather than in the service of god. Can Baptiste survive the ordeal or will he succumb to the psychological pressures? The novel is semi-autobiographical and was also adapted into a critically acclaimed silent-era film featuring an all-Black film cast. Extract: Their cognomen was Stewart, and three years had gone by since their return from Western Kansas where they had been on what they now chose to regard as a Wild Goose Chase. The substance was, that as farmers they had failed to raise even one crop during the three years they spent there, so had in the end, therefore, returned broken and defeated to the rustic old district of Indiana where they had again taken up their residence on a rented farm. Welcomed home like the return of the prodigal, the age old gossip of I told you so! had been exchanged, and the episode was about forgotten... |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Homesteader Oscar Micheaux, 1917 |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Film Blackness Michael Boyce Gillespie, 2016-08-25 In Film Blackness Michael Boyce Gillespie shifts the ways we think about black film, treating it not as a category, a genre, or strictly a representation of the black experience but as a visual negotiation between film as art and the discursivity of race. Gillespie challenges expectations that black film can or should represent the reality of black life or provide answers to social problems. Instead, he frames black film alongside literature, music, art, photography, and new media, treating it as an interdisciplinary form that enacts black visual and expressive culture. Gillespie discusses the racial grotesque in Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin (1975), black performativity in Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street (1989), blackness and noir in Bill Duke's Deep Cover (1992), and how place and desire impact blackness in Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy (2008). Considering how each film represents a distinct conception of the relationship between race and cinema, Gillespie recasts the idea of black film and poses new paradigms for genre, narrative, aesthetics, historiography, and intertextuality. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Forged Note Oscar Micheaux, 1915 |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Bible in Motion Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, 2016-09-12 This two-part volume contains a comprehensive collection of original studies by well-known scholars focusing on the Bible’s wide-ranging reception in world cinema. It is organized into sections examining the rich cinematic afterlives of selected characters from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament; considering issues of biblical reception across a wide array of film genres, ranging from noir to anime; featuring directors, from Lee Chang-dong to the Coen brothers, whose body of work reveals an enduring fascination with biblical texts and motifs; and offering topical essays on cinema’s treatment of selected biblical themes (e.g., lament, apocalyptic), particular interpretive lenses (e.g., feminist interpretation, queer theory), and windows into biblical reception in a variety of world cinemas (e.g., Indian, Israeli, and Third Cinema). This handbook is intended for scholars of the Bible, religion, and film as well as for a wider general audience. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Uplift Cinema Allyson Nadia Field, 2015-05-22 In Uplift Cinema, Allyson Nadia Field recovers the significant yet forgotten legacy of African American filmmaking in the 1910s. Like the racial uplift project, this cinema emphasized economic self-sufficiency, education, and respectability as the keys to African American progress. Field discusses films made at the Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes to promote education, as well as the controversial The New Era, which was an antiracist response to D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. She also shows how Black filmmakers in New York and Chicago engaged with uplift through the promotion of Black modernity. Uplift cinema developed not just as a response to onscreen racism, but constituted an original engagement with the new medium that has had a deep and lasting significance for African American cinema. Although none of these films survived, Field's examination of archival film ephemera presents a method for studying lost films that opens up new frontiers for exploring early film culture. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Silent Movies Peter Kobel, 2009-02-28 Drawing on the extraordinary collection of The Library of Congress, one of the greatest repositories for silent film and memorabilia, Peter Kobel has created the definitive visual history of silent film. From its birth in the 1890s, with the earliest narrative shorts, through the brilliant full-length features of the 1920s, Silent Movies captures the greatest directors and actors and their immortal films. Silent Movies also looks at the technology of early film, the use of color photography, and the restoration work being spearheaded by some of Hollywood's most important directors, such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. Richly illustrated from the Library of Congress's extensive collection of posters, paper prints, film stills, and memorabilia -- most of which have never been in print -- Silent Movies is an important work of history that will also be a sought-after gift book for all lovers of film. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Before the Nickelodeon Charles Musser, 2023-11-15 Before the Nickelodeon by Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company offers an in-depth look at one of the most formative periods in cinema history, from the earliest days of commercial motion pictures through 1909. Written by a leading scholar in film history, this book explores the extraordinary contributions of Edwin S. Porter, the filmmaker behind The Great Train Robbery, and his intricate relationship with the Edison Manufacturing Company, one of the earliest players in the motion picture industry. Edwin S. Porter was not just a filmmaker but a pioneer whose work shaped the path of early cinema. This book examines his role within the rapidly evolving practices of the pre-Griffith era, exploring how his innovative films, such as Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, marked milestones in cinematic storytelling and technical advances. The book delves into the industrial history of the Edison Manufacturing Company and how Porter's work there played a key role in the company’s evolution. The study also sheds light on the complex dynamics between Porter's creative processes and the business practices of the Edison company, particularly during a time when the production and exhibition of films were being centralized under one management. Drawing from extensive research, primary sources, and surviving films, Before McKeimon goes beyond traditional biographical work to position Porter as a critical figure in the history of early cinema. This book not only honors Porter's creative legacy but also offers a comprehensive look at the intersection of film production, commercial practice, and cultural significance during cinema’s formative years. Ideal for film historians, scholars, and cinema enthusiasts, this work illuminates an essential chapter of film history that has often been overlooked. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Straight Lick J. Ronald Green, 2000-09-22 A critical examination of the films of Oscar Micheaux. One of the most original and successful filmmakers of all time, Oscar Micheaux was born into a rural, working-class, African-American family in mid-America in 1884, yet he created an impressive legacy in commercial cinema. Between 1913 and 1951 he wrote, directed, and distributed some forty-three feature films, more than any other black filmmaker in the world, a record of production that is likely to stand for a very long time. Micheaux's work was founded upon the concern for class mobility, or uplift, for African Americans. Uplift provided the context for Micheaux's extensive commentary on racist cinema, such as D. W. Griffith's 1915 blockbuster, The Birth of a Nation, which Micheaux answered with his very early films Within Our Gates and Symbol of the Unconquered. Uplift explains Micheaux's use of negative images of African Americans as well as his multi-pronged campaign against stereotype and caricature in American culture. His campaign produced a body of films saturated with a nuanced intertexual signifying, boldly and repeatedly treating controversial topics that face white censorship time after time, topics ranging from white mob and Klan violence to light-skin-color fetish to white financing of black cultural productions. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks Donald Bogle, 2003 This study of black images in American motion pictures, is re-issued for its 30th anniverary in its 4th edition. It includes the entire 20th century through black images in film, from the silent era to the unequalled rise of the new African American cinema and stars of today. From The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, and Carmen Jones to Shaft, Do the Right Thing, Waiting to Exhale, The Hurricane, and Bamboozled, Donald Bogle reveals the way the image of blacks in American cinema has changed - and also the shocking way in which it has often remained the same. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Documentary Film Reader Jonathan Kahana, 2016 The Documentary Film Reader brings together an expansive range of writing by scholars, critics, historians, and filmmakers to provide a stimulating foundational text for students and others who want to undertake study of nonfiction film. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Hollywood Black Donald Bogle, Turner Classic Movies, 2019-05-07 The films, the stars, the filmmakers-all get their due in Hollywood Black, a sweeping overview of blacks in film from the silent era through Black Panther, with striking photos and an engrossing history by award-winning author Donald Bogle. The story opens in the silent film era, when white actors in blackface often played black characters, but also saw the rise of independent African American filmmakers, including the remarkable Oscar Micheaux. It follows the changes in the film industry with the arrival of sound motion pictures and the Great Depression, when black performers such as Stepin Fetchit and Bill Bojangles Robinson began finding a place in Hollywood. More often than not, they were saddled with rigidly stereotyped roles, but some gifted performers, most notably Hattie McDaniel in Gone With the Wind (1939), were able to turn in significant performances. In the coming decades, more black talents would light up the screen. Dorothy Dandridge became the first African American to earn a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Carmen Jones (1954), and Sidney Poitier broke ground in films like The Defiant Ones and1963's Lilies of the Field. Hollywood Black reveals the changes in images that came about with the evolving social and political atmosphere of the US, from the Civil Rights era to the Black Power movement. The story takes readers through Blaxploitation, with movies like Shaft and Super Fly, to the emergence of such stars as Cicely Tyson, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Whoopi Goldberg, and of directors Spike Lee and John Singleton. The history comes into the new millennium with filmmakers Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), Ava Du Vernay (Selma),and Ryan Coogler (Black Panther); megastars such as Denzel Washington, Will Smith, and Morgan Freeman; as well as Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, Viola Davis, and a glorious gallery of others. Filled with evocative photographs and stories of stars and filmmakers on set and off, Hollywood Black tells an underappreciated history as it's never before been told. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Blacks in American Films and Television Donald Bogle, 1988 |
| oscar micheaux documentary: 30-Second Cinema Nikki Baughan, 2019-03-14 Are you an art-movie buff or a blockbuster enthusiast? Can you reel off a list of New Wave masterpieces, or are you more interested in classic Westerns? Most of us love the movies in one form or another, but very few of us have the all-round knowledge we'd like. 30-Second Cinema offers an immersion course, served up in neat, entertaining shorts. These 50 topics deal with cinema's beginnings, with its growth as an industry, with key stars and producers, with global movements--from German Expressionism to New Hollywood--and with the movies as a business. By the time you've worked your way through, you'll be able to identify the work of George Melies, define auteur theory or mumblecore in a couple of pithy phrases, and you'll have broadened your knowledge of global cinema to embrace not only Bollywood but Nollywood, too. All in the time it takes to watch a couple of trailers. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Colorization Wil Haygood, 2024-05-28 A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR - BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE - ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.... Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read. --Shondaland This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies--from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther--using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. From the acclaimed author of The Butler and Showdown. Beginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation--which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster--Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, on-screen and behind the scenes. He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves--including Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others. An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Documentary Across Platforms Patricia R. Zimmermann, 2019-10-01 Essays “capturing media ecologies as varied as museum installations, film festival showings, photography, and multiple varieties of internet sharing.” —Jump Cut In Documentary Across Platforms, noted scholar of film and experimental media Patricia R. Zimmermann offers a glimpse into the ever-evolving constellation of practices known as “documentary” and the way in which they investigate, engage with, and interrogate the world. Collected here for the first time are her celebrated essays and speculations about documentary, experimental, and new media published outside of traditional scholarly venues. These essays envision documentary as a complex ecology composed of different technologies, sets of practices, and specific relationships to communities, engagement, politics, and social struggles. Through the lens of reverse engineering—the concept that ideas, just like objects, can be disassembled to learn how they work and then rebuilt into something new and better—Zimmermann explores how numerous small-scale documentary works present strategies of intervention into existing power structures. Adaptive to their context, modular, and unfixed, the documentary practices she explores exploit both sophisticated high-end professional and consumer-grade amateur technologies, moving through different political terrains, different platforms, and different exhibition contexts. Together these essays demonstrate documentary’s role as a conceptual practice to think through how the world is organized and to imagine ways that it might be reorganized with actions, communities, and ideas. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Ten Nights in a Bar-room Timothy Shay Arthur, 1858 |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Sounds of Early Cinema Richard Abel, Rick R. Altman, 2001-10-03 The Sounds of Early Cinema is devoted exclusively to a little-known, yet absolutely crucial phenomenon: the ubiquitous presence of sound in early cinema. Silent cinema may rarely have been silent, but the sheer diversity of sound(s) and sound/image relations characterizing the first 20 years of moving picture exhibition can still astonish us. Whether instrumental, vocal, or mechanical, sound ranged from the improvised to the pre-arranged (as in scripts, scores, and cue sheets). The practice of mixing sounds with images differed widely, depending on the venue (the nickelodeon in Chicago versus the summer Chautauqua in rural Iowa, the music hall in London or Paris versus the newest palace cinema in New York City) as well as on the historical moment (a single venue might change radically, and many times, from 1906 to 1910). Contributors include Richard Abel, Rick Altman, Edouard Arnoldy, Mats Björkin, Stephen Bottomore, Marta Braun, Jean Châteauvert, Ian Christie, Richard Crangle, Helen Day-Mayer, John Fullerton, Jane Gaines, André Gaudreault, Tom Gunning, François Jost, Charlie Keil, Jeff Klenotic, Germain Lacasse, Neil Lerner, Patrick Loughney, David Mayer, Domi-nique Nasta, Bernard Perron, Jacques Polet, Lauren Rabinovitz, Isabelle Raynauld, Herbert Reynolds, Gregory A. Waller, and Rashit M. Yangirov. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Documentary Across Platforms Patricia R. Zimmermann, 2019-10-01 In Documentary Across Platforms, noted scholar of film and experimental media Patricia R. Zimmermann offers a glimpse into the ever-evolving constellation of practices known as documentary and the way in which they investigate, engage with, and interrogate the world. Collected here for the first time are her celebrated essays and speculations about documentary, experimental, and new media published outside of traditional scholarly venues. These essays envision documentary as a complex ecology composed of different technologies, sets of practices, and specific relationships to communities, engagement, politics, and social struggles. Through the lens of reverse engineering—the concept that ideas just like objects can be disassembled to learn how they work and then rebuilt into something new and better—Zimmermann explores how numerous small-scale documentary works present strategies of intervention into existing power structures. Adaptive to their context, modular, and unfixed, the documentary practices she explores exploit both sophisticated high-end professional and consumer-grade amateur technologies, moving through different political terrains, different platforms, and different exhibition contexts. Together these essays demonstrate documentary's role as a conceptual practice to think through how the world is organized and to imagine ways that it might be reorganized with actions, communities, and ideas. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Envisioning Freedom Cara Caddoo, 2014-10-13 In Cara Caddoo’s perspective-changing study, African Americans emerge as pioneers of cinema from the 1890s to 1920s. But as it gained popularity, black cinema also became controversial. Black leaders demanded self-representation and an end to cinematic mischaracterizations which, they charged, violated the civil rights of African Americans. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Oxford Bibliographies , |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Oxford History of World Cinema Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 1996 Featuring nearly three thousand film stills, production shots, and other illustrations, an authoritative history of the cinema traces the development of the medium, its filmmakers and stars, and the evolution of national cinemas around the world. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Crafting Truth Louise Spence, Vinicius Navarro, 2010-12-16 Documentaries such as Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's Born into Brothels, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, Jeffrey Blitz's Spellbound, along with March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth have achieved critical as well as popular success. Although nonfiction film may have captured imaginations, many viewers enter and leave theaters with a nanve concept of truth and reality-for them, documentaries are information sources. But is truth or reality readily available, easily acquired, or undisputed? Or do documentaries convey illusions of truth and reality? What aesthetic means are used to build these illusions? A documentary's sounds and images are always the product of selection and choice, and often underscore points the filmmaker wishes to make. Crafting Truth illuminates the ways these films tell their stories; how they use the camera, editing, sound, and performance; what rhetorical devices they employ; and what the theoretical, practical, and ethical implications of these choices are. Complex documentary concepts are presented through easily accessible language, images, and a discussion of a wide range of films and videos to encourage new ways of thinking about and seeing nonfiction film. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Documentary Film Book Brian Winston, 2019-07-25 Powerfully posing questions of ethics, ideology, authorship and form, documentary film has never been more popular than it is today. Edited by one of the leading British authorities in the field, The Documentary Film Book is an essential guide to current thinking on documentary film. In a series of fascinating essays, key international experts discuss the theory of documentary, outline current understandings of its history (from pre-Flaherty to the post-Griersonian world of digital 'i-Docs'), survey documentary production (from Africa to Europe, and from the Americas to Asia), consider documentaries by marginalised minority communities, and assess its contribution to other disciplines and arts. Brought together here in one volume, these scholars offer compelling evidence as to why, over the last few decades, documentary has come to the centre of screen studies. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Contemporary Black American Cinema Mia Mask, 2012-08-21 Contemporary Black American Cinema offers a fresh collection of essays on African American film, media, and visual culture in the era of global multiculturalism. Integrating theory, history, and criticism, the contributing authors deftly connect interdisciplinary perspectives from American studies, cinema studies, cultural studies, political science, media studies, and Queer theory. This multidisciplinary methodology expands the discursive and interpretive registers of film analysis. From Paul Robeson’s and Sidney Poitier’s star vehicles to Lee Daniels’s directorial forays, these essays address the career legacies of film stars, examine various iterations of Blaxploitation and animation, question the comedic politics of fat suit films, and celebrate the innovation of avant-garde and experimental cinema. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Movie-Struck Girls Shelley Stamp, 2018-06-05 Movie-Struck Girls examines women's films and filmgoing in the 1910s, a period when female patronage was energetically courted by the industry for the first time. By looking closely at how women were invited to participate in movie culture, the films they were offered, and the visual pleasures they enjoyed, Shelley Stamp demonstrates that women significantly complicated cinemagoing throughout this formative, transitional era. Growing female patronage and increased emphasis on women's subject matter did not necessarily bolster cinema's cultural legitimacy, as many in the industry had hoped, for women were not always enticed to the cinema by dignified, uplifting material, and once there, they were not always seamlessly integrated in the social space of theaters, nor the new optical pleasures of film viewing. In fact, Stamp argues that much about women's films and filmgoing in the postnickelodeon years challenged, rather than served, the industry's drive for greater respectability. White slave films, action-adventure serial dramas, and women's suffrage photoplays all drew female audiences to the cinema with stories aimed directly at women's interests and with advertising campaigns that specifically targeted female moviegoers. Yet these examples suggest that women's patronage was built with stories focused on sexuality, sensational thrill-seeking, and feminist agitation, topics not normally associated with ladylike gentility. And in each case concerns were raised about women's conduct at cinemas and the viewing habits they enjoyed, demonstrating that women's integration into motion picture culture was not as smooth as many have thought. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Horror Noire Robin R. Means Coleman, 2013-03 From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890's to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of blackness itself. Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films. Throughout the text, the reader is encouraged to unpack the genre’s racialized imagery, as well as the narratives that make up popular culture’s commentary on race. Offering a comprehensive chronological survey of the genre, this book addresses a full range of black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, as well as art-house films, Blaxploitation films, direct-to-DVD films, and the emerging U.S./hip-hop culture-inspired Nigerian Nollywood Black horror films. Horror Noire is, thus, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Thomas A. Edison and His Kinetographic Motion Pictures Charles Musser, 1995 Much controversy has surrounded Thomas A. Edison's role in the birth of motion pictures. His earliest biographers gave all honor to him; later historians gave credit to his assistants or to foreign inventors whose recognition Edison stole. Charles Musser provides a balanced assessment, arguing that while Edison left the day-to-day experimentation to his talented employees, he provided the ideas and encouragement as well as financial support. Without him, the technical hurdles would not have been overcome so quickly. As time went on, and innovations in the motion picture business shifted from improving machines to improving the moving pictures themselves and the meyhods of exhibiting them, Edison's Laboratory lost its advantage. After three decades of patent wars and attempted monopolization of cameras and projectors, the battle moved away from the inventor and toward the producers and nickelodeon owners. Edison briefly experimented with a home movie projector, to steal a march on his rivals, but he was way ahead of his time. After thirty years, he closed down his movie studio and moved on to other projects. This brief, informative story of Edison's key contributions to the invention of motion pictures is heavily illustrated and beautifully designed. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Authorship and Film David A. Gerstner, Janet Staiger, 2013-09-13 Authorship in film has been a persistent theme in the field of cinema studies. This volume of new work revitalizes the question of authorship by connecting it to larger issues of identity--in film, in the marketplace, in society, in culture. Essays range from the auteur theory and Casablanca to Oscar Micheaux, from the American avant-garde to community video, all illuminating how authorship is a complex idea with far-reaching implications. This ambitious and wide-ranging book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with film studies and the concept of the author. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Understanding Reality Television Su Holmes, Deborah Jermyn, 2004 Tracing the history of reality TV from Candid Camera to The Osbournes, Understanding Reality Television examines a range of programmes which claim to depict 'real life'. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Fire and Desire Jane Gaines, 2001-02 This work looks at the black independent film movement during the silent period. It traces the profound influence that D.W. Griffith's racist epic The Birth of a Nation exerted on black filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux, the director of the newly recovered Within Our Gates. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Oxford Handbook of American Documentary Joshua Glick, Visiting Associate Professor of Film & Electronic Arts Joshua Glick, Patricia Aufderheide, University Professor in the School of Communication Patricia Aufderheide, 2025 Joshua Glick and Patricia Aufderheide Over the past twenty years, documentaries have taken on an increasingly central place in American public life. One measure of their importance is their commercial value. Major media companies have moved aggressively to monetize documentary, exploiting the form's relatively low budgets (compared to fiction)-- |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Leo Frank Case Leonard Dinnerstein, 1999-03 A account of the trial and lynching of Leo Frank, the Jewish factory manager accused of the brutal murder of Mary Phagan. The author places Frank's trial and lynching in the context of a rapidly changing southern United States society. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: American Film History Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, Art Simon, 2015-09-08 From the American underground film to the blockbuster superhero, this authoritative collection of introductory and specialized readings explores the core issues and developments in American cinematic history during the second half of the twentieth-century through the present day. Considers essential subjects that have shaped the American film industry—from the impact of television and CGI to the rise of independent and underground film; from the impact of the civil rights, feminist and LGBT movements to that of 9/11. Features a student-friendly structure dividing coverage into the periods 1960-1975, 1976-1990, and 1991 to the present day, each of which opens with an historical overview Brings together a rich and varied selection of contributions by established film scholars, combining broad historical, social, and political contexts with detailed analysis of individual films, including Midnight Cowboy, Nashville, Cat Ballou, Chicago, Back to the Future, Killer of Sheep, Daughters of the Dust, Nothing But a Man, Ali, Easy Rider, The Conversation, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Longtime Companion, The Matrix, The War Tapes, the Batman films, and selected avant-garde and documentary films, among many others. Additional online resources, such as sample syllabi, which include suggested readings and filmographies, for both general and specialized courses, will be available online. May be used alongside American Film History: Selected Readings, Origins to 1960 to provide an authoritative study of American cinema from its earliest days through the new millennium |
| oscar micheaux documentary: The Cinema Book Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019-07-25 The Cinema Book is widely recognised as the ultimate guide to cinema. Authoritative and comprehensive, the third edition has been extensively revised, updated and expanded in response to developments in cinema and cinema studies. Lavishly illustrated in colour, this edition features a wealth of exciting new sections and in-depth case studies. Sections address Hollywood and other World cinema histories, key genres in both fiction and non-fiction film, issues such as stars, technology and authorship, and major theoretical approaches to understanding film. |
| oscar micheaux documentary: Struggles for Representation Phyllis Rauch Klotman, Janet K. Cutler, 1999 Struggles for Representation examines over 300 non-fiction films by more than 150 African American film/videomakers and includes an extensive filmography, bibliography, and excerpts from interviews with film/videomakers. In eleven original essays, contributors explore the extraordinary scope of these aesthetic and social documents and chart a previously undiscovered territory: documentaries that examine the aesthetic, economic, historical, political, and social forces that shape the lives of black Americans, as seen from their perspectives. Until now, scholars and critics have concentrated on black fiction film and on mainstream non-fiction films, neglecting the groundbreaking body of black non-fiction productions that offer privileged views of American life. Yet, these rich and varied works in film, video, and new electronic media, convey vast stores of knowledge and experience. Although most documentary cannot hope to match fiction film's mass appeal, it is unrivaled in its ability to portray searing, indelible impressions of black life, including concrete views of significant events and moving portraits of charismatic individuals. Documentary footage brings audiences the moments when civil rights protestors were attacked by state troopers; it provides the sights and sounds of Malcom X delivering an electrifying speech, Betty Carter performing a heart-wrenching song, and Langston Hughes strolling on a beach. Uniting all of this work is the struggle for representation that characterizes each film–an urgent desire to convey black life in ways that counter the uninformed and often distorted representations of mass media film and television productions. African American documentaries have long been associated with struggles for social and political empowerment; for many film/videomakers, documentary is a compelling mode with which to present an alternative, more authentic narrative of black experiences and an effective critique of mainstream discourse. Thus, many socially and politically committed film/videomakers view documentary as a tool with which to interrogate and reinvent history; their works fill gaps, correct errors, and expose distortions in order to provide counter-narratives of African American experience. Contributors include Paul Arthur, Houston A. Baker, Jr., Mark F. Baker, Pearl Bowser, Janet K. Cutler Manthia Diawara, Elizabeth Amelia Hadley, Phyllis R. Klotman, Tommy Lee Lott, Erika Muhammad, Valerie Smith, and Clyde Taylor. |
Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
scientific and technical awards | 14 awards and a special oscar for captioning technology
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Oscars.org
Since 1929, the Oscars have recognized excellence in cinematic achievements.For a complete list of winners for the 97th Oscars, click here.
The 97th Academy Awards | 2025 - Oscars.org
How Do They Make The Oscar Statuette? With Reece Feldman. Musical Director Michael Bearden Keeps The Music Moving. View More Highlights. Memorable Moments. 97th Oscars …
The 96th Academy Awards | 2024 - Oscars.org
Oscar Nominees Learn How To Sign Their Films. 96th Oscars Nominees Luncheon. View More Highlights. Memorable Moments. 96th Oscars acting winners - Robert Downey, Jr., Da'Vine …
Home - Academy Awards Search | Academy of Motion Picture Arts …
THE OFFICIAL ACADEMY AWARDS® DATABASE. The Academy Awards Database contains the official record of past Academy Award winners and nominees. The data is complete …
The 95th Academy Awards | 2023 - Oscars.org
95th Oscars acting winners - Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, Brendan Fraser, Jamie Lee Curtis
How To Watch The Oscars
Tune in to the 97th Oscars at the new time of 7:00pm EDT / 4:00pm PDT / 11:00pm GMT / 7:00am CST. Follow the Oscars season journey across Oscar.com, Oscars.org, or on the …
95th OSCARS® NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED | Academy Press …
Jan 24, 2023 · LOS ANGELES, CA – Oscar®-winning actor-producer Riz Ahmed and actor Allison Williams announced the 95th Oscars® nominations today (January 24), live from the …
News | Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Apr 10, 2025 · For a second consecutive year, Emmy® Award-winning television host, writer, producer and comedian Conan O’Brien will return to host the Oscars® broadcast, and Emmy …
2024 Oscars Nominations: See the Full List | Academy
Jan 23, 2024 · My Oscar: Mel Brooks Dec 19, 2024 At 98 and still making people laugh, Mel Brooks says "It's a wonderful feeling to know that you are still counted as a valuable contributor …
Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
scientific and technical awards | 14 awards and a special oscar for captioning technology
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Oscars.org
Since 1929, the Oscars have recognized excellence in cinematic achievements.For a complete list of winners for the 97th Oscars, click here.
The 97th Academy Awards | 2025 - Oscars.org
How Do They Make The Oscar Statuette? With Reece Feldman. Musical Director Michael Bearden Keeps The Music Moving. View More Highlights. Memorable Moments. 97th Oscars …
The 96th Academy Awards | 2024 - Oscars.org
Oscar Nominees Learn How To Sign Their Films. 96th Oscars Nominees Luncheon. View More Highlights. Memorable Moments. 96th Oscars acting winners - Robert Downey, Jr., Da'Vine …
Home - Academy Awards Search | Academy of Motion Picture Arts …
THE OFFICIAL ACADEMY AWARDS® DATABASE. The Academy Awards Database contains the official record of past Academy Award winners and nominees. The data is complete …
The 95th Academy Awards | 2023 - Oscars.org
95th Oscars acting winners - Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, Brendan Fraser, Jamie Lee Curtis
How To Watch The Oscars
Tune in to the 97th Oscars at the new time of 7:00pm EDT / 4:00pm PDT / 11:00pm GMT / 7:00am CST. Follow the Oscars season journey across Oscar.com, Oscars.org, or on the …
95th OSCARS® NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED | Academy Press …
Jan 24, 2023 · LOS ANGELES, CA – Oscar®-winning actor-producer Riz Ahmed and actor Allison Williams announced the 95th Oscars® nominations today (January 24), live from the …
News | Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Apr 10, 2025 · For a second consecutive year, Emmy® Award-winning television host, writer, producer and comedian Conan O’Brien will return to host the Oscars® broadcast, and Emmy …
2024 Oscars Nominations: See the Full List | Academy
Jan 23, 2024 · My Oscar: Mel Brooks Dec 19, 2024 At 98 and still making people laugh, Mel Brooks says "It's a wonderful feeling to know that you are still counted as a valuable contributor …
