Directed by Spencer Williams • 1931 • United States
Starring Thurston Briggs, Spencer Williams
Virtually unseen for more than eighty years, Spencer Williams’s first film is a one-reel comedy short in which a rivalry between two men is played out in a high-stakes game of mini golf.
Up Next in Part 2: Shorts and rarities
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We Work Again
Director Unknown • 1937 • United States
The role of African Americans in the recovery years of the Great Depression is the subject of this informational short, which offers an idealized depiction of life in a segregated society. The highlight, by far, is rare footage of Orson Welles’s “Voodoo Ma...
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Zora Neale Hurston Fieldwork Footage
Directed by Zora Neale Hurston • 1928 • United States
While a student of anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University, Zora Neale Hurston embarked on a journey through Alabama and Florida, using a 16 mm camera to capture life among the rural African American communities she found there. Hurs...
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Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort S...
Directed by Zora Neale Hurston • 1940 • United States
This footage, shot by author Zora Neale Hurston in the Sea Island community of Beaufort, South Carolina, observes the religious practices of the Gullah people. The footage is accompanied here by field audio recordings by Norman Chalfin, who ...
