The mission of The Department of Afro-American Research Arts and Culture to identify the global significance of the creative contributions pioneered by an international diaspora of Blackness
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Thursday, August 25, 2016

Hellbound Train (1930)



















Starring:


Storyline
This film is the work of self-taught filmmakers James and Eloyce Gist, African-American evangelists who employed cinema as a tool for their traveling ministry. Their surreal visual allegories were screened in churches and meeting halls, accompanied by sermon and the passing of a collection plate. Rather than having a linear story, the film is instead a catalog of iniquity, a car-by-car dramatization of the sins of the Jazz Age (including gambling, dancing, alcohol, and the mistreatment of animals), presided over by a honored devil, culminating in a colossal derailment (a model train tossed into a bonfire).  

This film was restored by Kino Lorber which was archived in the Library of Congress and released in a 5 disc box set: Pioneers of African American Cinema. 

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