Within Our Gates (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #19 extract: Within Our Gates (1920)



This is a film by Oscar Micheaux, not the very first, but the first significant African-American filmmaker who had a decades-long career contributing hugely to the cultural expansion of American cinema. With Our Gates is then an early example of the "race film". This was considered a genre of film that lasted from the late nineteen-teens until post-WW2 (around the 50s) that would be made with minorities (the small studios and crews would often be all-white - though, this isn't the case with Micheaux) and for minorities in the unambiguously segregated South and the de facto segregated North as a prevalent and successful form of independent or alternative cinema in the America's studio era. 
Most valuable as a historical and a cultural document, Within Our Gates gives insight into this kind of filmmaking and the purpose of independent forms of cinema over the ages. A must-watch for anyone interested in such topics.

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