Directed by Richard Maurice • 1928 • United States
Starring Richard Maurice, Sammie Fields, Wanda Maurice
Produced in Detroit, Michigan by little-known African American filmmaker Richard Maurice, ELEVEN P.M. is a surreal melodrama in which a poor violinist named Sundaisy (Maurice) tries to protect an orphaned girl (Wanda Maurice) from a small-time hoodlum. The story, which may or may not be a dream concocted by a struggling newspaperman, has one of the most bizarre endings in film history, when the spirit of the deceased Sundaisy possesses the body of a dog in order to take vengeance upon the crook.
Directed by James Gist and Eloyce Gist • 1930 • United States
HELL-BOUND TRAIN is arguably the most significant rediscovery in Pioneers of African American Cinema. The film is the work of self-taught filmmakers James and Eloyce Gist, African American evangelists who employed cinema as a tool for...
Directed by Oscar Micheaux • 1931 • United States
Starring Eunice Brooks, Stanley Morrell, Nora Newsome
THE EXILE is the earliest surviving sound feature by an African American filmmaker. Director Oscar Micheaux responds to the arrival of sound with a change in his visual style, indulging in len...
Directed by Oscar Micheaux • 1932 • United States
Starring Carl Mahon, Star Calloway, Alice B. Russell
A remake of director Oscar Micheaux’s now-lost 1926 silent film THE SPIDER’S WEB, THE GIRL FROM CHICAGO is another film that explores the cultural rift between the urban and the rural, set in b...
