Storyline As a filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux was something of a firebrand, but his attitudes and methods were anything but predictable - often leveling criticism at certain strata of the African-American community. His most outrageous film is a traditional minstrel show - an olio of broad comedy and choral interludes. It is an acknowledge of minstrelsy as a defining tradition of African-American stage performance. If nothing else, The Darktown Revue is an invaluable historical document for recording on film the "Hard Shell Sermon" routine popularized by turn-of-the-century minstrel performer Amon Davis. but there is something else. True to form, Micheaux's depiction of a minister is not flattering. Davis's comic sermon of gibberish is a scathing satire of charismatic religion, made even more troubling by the fact that it is performed by a black man in blackface.By the same token, one cannot help but wonder if Micheaux was further provoking his audience by having the uplifting Donald Heywood choir open the film with a rendition of "Watermelon Time."
Storyline In December, 1986, three black men ran into car trouble in Howard Beach, a
middle-class neighborhood in New York City. Unable to start their car,
they sought refuge in a nearby restaurant. What happened later that
night shocked the entire city.
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).
.jpg)
%20%5BDVD%20Front%20Cover%5D.jpg)
