Oscar Micheaux and His Circle

African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era

Edited by Charles Musser, Jane Marie Gaines and Pearl Bowser

Published by: Indiana University Press

384 Pages, 155 b&w photos

Paperback
9780253021359
Published: March 2016

$24.00

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eBook
9780253021557
Published: March 2016

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise
Feature

Contents

The Touring Package: Programs and Credits
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Oscar Micheaux and Race Movies of the Silent Period / Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser

I. Overviews
1. Black Silence and the Politics of Representation / Clyde R. Taylor
2. The Notion of Treatment: Black Aesthetics and Film / based on an interview with Peter Hessli and additional contributions from Pearl Bowser, A. J. Jafa
3. From Shadows 'n Shufflin' to Spotlights and Cinema: The Lafayette Players, 1915-1932 / Sr. Francesca Thompson
4. The African-American Press and Race Movies, 1909-1929 / Charlene Regester

II. Oscar Micheaux
5. Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates: The Possibilities for Alternative Visions / Michele Wallace
6. Within Our Gates: From Race Melodrama to Opportunity Narrative / Jane Gaines
7. Oscar Micheaux's The Symbol of the Unconquered: Text and Context / Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence
8. To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul / Charles Musser
9. Black Patriarch on the Prairie: National Identity and Black Manhood in the Early Novels of Oscar Micheaux / Jayna Brown
10. Telling White Lies: Oscar Micheaux and Charles W. Chesnutt / Corey Creekmur

III. Micheaux's Contemporaries
11. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: The Flying Ace, the Norman Company, and the Micheaux Connection / Phyllis Klotman
12. Colored Players Film Corporation
An Alternative to Micheaux / Charles Musser
Lost, then Found: The Wedding Scene from The Scar of Shame (1929) / Pearl Bowser
13. Richard D. Maurice and the Maurice Film Company / Pearl Bowser and Charles Musser
14. Cinematic Foremothers: Zora Neale Hurston and Eloyce King Patrick Gist / Gloria J. Gibson

Appendix A. The Reemergence of Oscar Micheaux: A Timeline and Bibliographic Essay / J. Ronald Green
Appendix B. An Oscar Micheaux Filmography: From the Silents through His Transition to Sound (1919—1931) / Compiled by Charles Musser, Corey Creekmur, Pearl Bowser, Charlene Regester, Ron Green, and Louise Spence
Appendix C. A Colored Players Film Corporation Filmography / Compiled by Charles Musser
Appendix D. Norman Film Manufacturing Company: Production and Theatrical Release Dates for All-Black-Cast Films / Compiled by Phyllis Klotman

Notes
Bibliography / Compiled by Kristen Barnes, Jane Gaines, Fred Neumann, and Hank Okazaki
About the Contributors
Credits
Index

"The 14 essays cover a range of topics, from overviews of black American performance and cinemas, to detailed analyses of Micheaux films, to thoughtful discussion of the work and impact of other groups of African American performers and filmmakers. The essays are lively and readable, casting light on an underrepresented fact of American film history. —Library Journal This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field restores Oscar Micheaux to the place he deserves in film history. The book will be a reference for anybody interested in the pioneers of American cinema. —Manthia Diawara, author African Cinema: Politics and Culture Oscar Michaeux and His Circle is a marvel of scholarly cooperative effort, an omnibus book of heroic scope befitting its authors' ambition to recreate the complex African American world of the 1920s that Micheaux and his movies meant to serve. . . . The book features an uncommonly rich trove of photographs, stills from his movies, advertisements, and other ephemera of his age, along with thorough-going bibliographies and filmographies. —Thomas Cripps, author of Black Film as Genre and Making Movies Black This is a landmark text, essential for teaching and reference. . . . A splendid collective achievement. —Hazel V. Carby, author of Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America and Race Men"

"An extremely valuable contribution to the history of African American art."
~Toni Morrison

"The 14 essays cover a range of topics, from overviews of black American performance and cinemas, to detailed analyses of Micheaux films, to thoughtful discussion of the work and impact of other groups of African American performers and filmmakers. The essays are lively and readable, casting light on an underrepresented fact of American film history."
~Library Journal