Even before the silver screen learned to talk, black actors and filmmakers were producing, directing and acting in their own movies. The contemporary contributions of black filmmakers such as writer/producer Ava DuVernay, whose film, Selma, was slighted for an Oscar nomination in the face of critical acclaim, reflect a history that dates back to Oscar Micheaux and his 1919 breakthrough movie, The Homesteader.
Micheaux and other legendary seminal artists had served as underpinnings for wave upon wave of blacks, many of whom have worked on both sides of the camera.
In the early days of film, beginning in 1910, independent black producers such as Micheaux, William Foster, George Randol and George and Noble Johnson created a voluminous body of work that was largely ignored by Hollywood. These filmmakers wove a decidedly positive portrayal of African Americans, rebutting the industry's depiction of blacks as contemptible comic relief or as superstitious cowards, lecherous and even bestial.
Although Hollywood was insensitive to the demands of blacks in starring roles, the rule in 1929 was, "Give the public whatever it wants." The public got the first all-black Hollywood films in Hallelujah! and Hearts of Dixie (1929). The themes, however, explored the racist notion that blacks were docile, religious and rhythmic. Four years later, Paul Robeson, a law school graduate who went on to become a renowned actor, singer, orator and rights activist, shattered that image when he starred in Emperor Jones.
Meanwhile, all-black casts backed by white producers imitated Hollywood themes successfully. In 1938, Harlem on the Prairie was the first black Western.
The following year, civil rights leaders decried the "Old South" mentality depicted in Gone with the Wind. Nevertheless, that film provided a milestone of sorts for blacks. Hattie McDaniel became the first black to win an Oscar for her supporting role of Mammy.
The scope of the old filmmakers' artistic and financial autonomy surfaced only at the twilight of the millennium, sharing the spotlight with a new breed of independent black artists, many of whom operate outside Hollywood.
The history of black cinema is rife with filmmakers whose collective imagination was as expansive as their budgets were limited. Hundreds of early "race" or black-cast films included both silents and talkies, the latter dating back to Micheaux's 1931 release, The Exile. He had walked the walk, or walked it like he talked it.
The black self-hate of Micheaux
Though the Johnson brothers were the first to organise a black film company, in 1916, it was Micheaux, as writer, producer, director and distributor of some 35 films within three decades, who amassed fame, albeit at the expense of respect from industry peers.
Born to former slaves in 1884 in a small town in Illinois, Micheaux was reviled for his condescending attitude and callous demeanor. His social deportment may have been shaped by stints as a Pullman porter and an unsuccessful author before he found his m�tier.
Michael Pounds, a film and electronic arts professor at Cal State University, believes Micheaux indulged in black self-hate and cites Micheaux's fascination with the notion of passing for white.
"He grew up in the plains, and the values he put forward were adapted from white culture and white society," Pounds says. At the same time, "he was tainted by black mentality.
"His films reflected the attitude of (some) African Americans, but not the African-American community. They had nothing to do with the problems the race faced, so they lacked depth."
An artist reviled
When this writer spoke with Carlton Moss for a paper on race movies, before his death in 1997, the prize-winning writer-producer-actor who starred in a couple of Micheaux's films, painted an intimate picture of the man as an artist reviled.
"The fact that in the beginning he was accepted by whites who bought his books was an early indication of his weakness," Moss had said. "He never understood that he was a freak. His redeeming value was that he believed in the work ethic and success.
But despite his drive, he was never able to achieve the big time. Ironically, discrimination would be the death of him.
"Yet the message of his movies was that whatever the fault of the black man, it was his own doing. And he couldn't criticise the white power structure or they'd close the movie house his film was playing in."
In his book Blacks in Black and White, Henry Sampson writes that in Pittsburgh, censors stopped The Exile in mid-screening when a white character, taking advantage of a "near-white" woman, was beaten by her black rescuer.
"Micheaux thought movies had an uplifting quality," says Thomas Cripps, Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, at Morgan State University. "He thought of film as an art that could teach. Small wonder Micheaux hammered his message home with topical themes like lynching, passing (for white) and miscegenation.
"Indeed, Micheaux's provocative productions teetered between acceptance and rejection. For the most part his films crossed the line. If the censors didn't pull them for lynching or interracial scenes, the black press decried the casting as "yellow fetishism."
Many a Micheaux film featured light-skinned blacks who epitomised purity, while "darkies" were seen as villainous.
Moss, too, had underscored this dichotomy.
"When he was courting the ladies, their families turned him down because he was too dark," Moss had said.
"He carried this rejection with him through his life.
"Adding fuel to his critics' ire, Micheaux employed "D" class white cameramen who had been kicked out of Hollywood–for a pittance. His reason for not hiring black crews? 'This ain't no school,' he'd say. 'I had to work for it. Let them work for it.'
Micheaux gave blackartists a chance to work
Micheaux's crudeness was matched only by his frugality. He'd film two reels, then showthem to theatre owners to obtain an advance before finishing the film and distributing it himself.
Such tightfistedness may have been responsible for the prodigious number of movies he made, but it also prohibited reshoots and retakes.
Micheaux wasn't a polished filmmaker, but he was "the American entrepreneur written large," says Dr Daniel Leab, a professor of history at Seton Hall University, whose research interests include history in film. "So what if he cast a dentist's daughter as a leading lady. It wasn't that she was great, but the dentist probably invested in his film."
Despite his failings, the bottom line was that Micheaux gave black artists such as Robeson, an opportunity to work, which they could not get in Hollywood. As Micheaux put it then, he enabled audiences to "view the coloured heart from close range."
"To expect black movie productions to compete with Hollywood is like asking a local body shop to compete with Detroit," Dr Leab says. "That's why Micheaux should be applauded."
In 1986, Wendell Franklin, the first black member of the Screen Directors Guild (The Greatest Story Ever Told, 1960), cited Micheaux's "bulldog tenacity" to spur the Guild to honour the filmmaker during its 50th anniversary celebrations, as well as cement Micheaux's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987. Franklin, who also directed 1971's The Bus Is Coming, certainly made his point: If the system was as tough as Hollywood claimed, then contributions of outcast black filmmakers could not be neglected.
Empathising with his mentor's shortcomings, Franklin noted several years ago that Bus made US$14 million, "but my check was only US$1,300."
Franklin gained an international reputation, but he and producer Horace Jackson lost their homes. "You want to see your film on the screen so bad, your enthusiasm gets in the way," Franklin said.
Post-war renaissance
After World War II there was a soft period for black filmmakers until the 1960s civil rights movement revived the independent spirit. Men who financed their own films, such as Ivan Dixon and Melvin Van Peebles, ushered in a renaissance period of black films. The rebirth began in 1968 with Gordon Parks' autobiographical The Learning Three. It matured in 1970 with Ossie Davis' Cotton Comes to Harlem. It spawned the "guerrilla cinema" and a rancorous Van Peebles, whose Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song elicited shades of Micheaux.
Sweetback generated a passel of black films that were termed "blaxploitation," because they exploited black audiences. Then the boom died, and black films faded in and out like the images on a bad reel. Later, at the turn of the 90s, with Spike Lee as point man, black filmmakers have been blazing new trails in Hollywood.
Consider the Hudlin brothers, Robert Townsend, John Singleton, Keenan Ivory Wayans, twins Allen and Albert Hughes, who made Menace II Society when they were just 23 years old, Julie Dash and more: Like Micheaux, they understood the marketplace as white and in control of financing and distribution. But unlike Micheaux, they didn't have to compromise what they had to say.
The old boys' club of the Academy
Likewise, in this postmodern era of film, Ava DuVernay, who has been unnecessarily chided by some media for employing poetic licence to mask a historical accuracy, walked the walk with Martin Luther King across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Still, critics prattle away on the film's treatment of President Lyndon Johnson's role in helping to assemble the Voting Rights Act, which he signed in 1965.
About the nomination diss, Los Angeles Times reported in 2012 that 93 per cent of Academy voters are white, and 73 per cent are male. Filmmakers like DuVernay, then, don't stand a chance in an old boys club, despite the diversity among media who practically showered four-star reviews on the film.
More than a century since Micheaux's breakthrough, and 50 years after black Americans were allowed their democratic right to the ballot box, Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom about the art of plotting, runs true to form.
Conflict defines the character, and theirs hardly justifies justice.
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This story was partly condensed from a paper on race movies for a university project by Dalton Narine, a Miami Herald writer and independent filmmaker, who is currently writing a screenplay about ambition, power and identity on the battlefield, which he experienced, for better or worse.
