(USA/1925—directed by Oscar Micheaux)

The actor Paul Robeson (1898-1976) first rose to fame as an ensemble member of the Provincetown Players in New York City, starting in 1916. Robeson’s motion picture debut came in Oscar Micheaux’s silent feature Body and Soul as Reverend Isaiah Jenkins, an escaped prisoner masquerading as a clergyman in a rural Georgia church to exploit the most vulnerable members.

The Motion Picture Production Code censored the film, citing its “sacrilege” based on Jenkins' mental abuse of a single mother played by Mercedes Gilbert. Micheaux was able to appease the ruling by re-editing the film with fantasy scenes suggesting any resemblance between the situations in Body and Soul and real life was imaginary. (82 min.)

Presented with a live musical score composed and performed by Rodney Whitaker. 

This program is part of a companion series of film and music events presented in celebration of Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts Feb. 4–June 23, 2024. Regeneration is organized by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.   

(USA/1930—directed by James Gist and Eloyce Gist)  

Eloyce Gist studied piano at Howard University during the late 1920s where she met and married James Gist, a devout Christian evangelist. Hellbound Train was made as part of their mission to spread messages of morality and personal responsibility to Black communities, and was presented at churches, schools, and tent revival meetings throughout the South.

Shot on 16mm film with an all-Black cast, the train ride is conducted by Satan who entices passengers with jazz music, gambling, and adultery. Each car of the train presents these seductive sins using surreal imagery, enhanced in their public screenings by live narration and a piano score performed by Eloyce. (60 min.) 

This program is part of a companion series of film and music events presented in celebration of Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts Feb. 4–June 23, 2024. Regeneration is organized by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.   

(USA/1937—directed by Sam Newfield) 

In this long-unavailable film, singer Herb Jeffries makes his cinematic debut as a strapping young cowpoke who comes to the rescue of a traveling medicine show battling outlaws for buried treasure.

Filmed at a Black-owned ranch in California’s Apple Valley, the film also includes Spencer Williams (director of The Blood of Jesus) and doo-wop quartet the Four Tones.

Newly restored, Harlem on the Prairie is packed with priceless music, thrills, romance, and the comedy of renowned actors Mantan Moreland and Flournoy E. Miller. (57 min.) 

This program is part of a companion series of film and music events presented in celebration of Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts Feb. 4–June 23, 2024. Regeneration is organized by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.   

This riveting exploration of family, history, and tragedy goes deep into the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters, unpacking a complex family dynamic through interviews and performance to examine how the Tunisian woman’s two eldest—teenagers at the time—were radicalized by extremists and became members of ISIS.

Casting professional actors as the missing daughters and acclaimed Egyptian-Tunisian actor Hend Sabri as Olfa, Four Daughters mixes interviews with the family alongside reenactments of pivotal moments, and ultimately gives the women agency over their own rich, complex family story. Winner of Best Documentary at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, this compelling nonfiction work explores the complex ties that bind mothers and daughters. 

In Arabic and French with English subtitles. (107 min.)

“A revelatory, poignant blend of drama, memory and self-scrutiny.” –Richard Brody, The New Yorker  
 

Celebrating Black Stories spotlights Black narratives that transcend national boundaries, culture, and language with films in English, French, Shona, and even ASL! Join a young astronomer during a lunar eclipse, a meaningful first visit to a barbershop, and witness the magic of a neighborhood castle all in one sitting with this immersive collection of films highlighting Black storytelling.  

These audience favorites and award-winning films, from the latest edition of New York International Children’s Film Festival, are sure to inspire curiosity and conversation for viewers big and small. In English or with English subtitles. (63 min.) 

Powerful films for ages 8 and up, in the DIA’s Lecture Hall.

(USA/2023—directed by Ava DuVernay) 

Join us for a special advance screening of this remarkable film. Written and directed by Academy Award® nominee Ava DuVernay, Origin chronicles the tragedy and triumph of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson as she investigates a global phenomenon.

Portrayed by Academy Award® nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Wilkerson experiences both love and unfathomable personal loss as she crosses continents and cultures to write Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, a culture-shifting New York Times’ bestseller. Based on her book, this film explores the fight for a more humane future for all.

Experience it at the DFT prior to the film’s theatrical release. Official Selection, Venice, and Toronto Film Festivals. (135 min.) 

“An exhortation to use every heartbeat wisely.” —Stephanie Zacharek, Time
 

(Mexico/France/2023—directed by Lila Avilés)    

Seven-year-old Sol (Naíma Sentíes) is helping her aunts prepare for her father’s surprise birthday party. As the house becomes increasingly boisterous, her father’s mysterious absence grows more and more concerning. 

“There isn’t a false note in the tender Mexican drama Tótem With intricate staging and camerawork, and an expressionistically warm palette — along with charming appearances from the natural world — writer-director Lila Avilés creates a richly textured, deeply compassionate portrait of a family that’s falling apart as one of the youngest members comes into consciousness.” –Manohla Dargis, The New York Times.

 In Spanish with English subtitles. (95 min.)
 

The Scar of Shame was one of only three feature films produced by the Colored Players Film Corporation, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1926 and produced silent romantic melodramas that featured all-Black casts and were shown to Black audiences. Harry Henderson plays a classic pianist and Lucia Lynn Moses a would-be cabaret singer; star-crossed lovers kept apart by the class divisions between educated strivers and the working poor who succumb to poverty, alcoholism, and crime.

The ambition of The Scar of Shame was to present realistic Black characters with no resemblance to Hollywood stereotypes, and to depict the ways in which middle-class Blacks in the 1920s struggled to create new American identities without abandoning their community.  

This screening will include Mercy the Mummy Mumbled (1918), a silent short from the Ebony Comedies series produced by the General Film Company. It will be presented with a live musical score composed and performed by saxophonist Mike Monford. (82 min.) Free with museum admission. 

This program is part of a companion series of film and music events presented in celebration of Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts Feb. 4–June 23, 2024. Regeneration is organized by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.   

Black History Month at the DIA is generously supported by Arn & Nancy Tellem.
 

(USA/1926—directed by Richard E. Norman) 

In The Flying Ace, the charismatic Laurence Criner stars as Captain Billy Stokes, a World War I pilot who returns home to find both romance and a plot involving a gang of payroll thieves. The fact that Black Americans were not permitted to serve as pilots in the US Armed Forces in 1926 did not stop writer-director Richard Norman from putting a valiant Black aviator at the center of his film.

His Florida-based Norman Pictures was one of the leading producers of race films alongside the Lincoln Motion Picture Company and the Micheaux Film Corporation. This remarkable film was preserved by the Library of Congress, and will be presented with a live score composed and performed by Alvin Waddles (piano), Marion Hayden (bass) and Vincent Chandler (trombone). Free with museum admission. (65 min.) 

This program is part of a companion series of film and music events presented in celebration of Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts Feb. 4–June 23, 2024. Regeneration is organized by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.   
 

(USA/1928—directed by Richard D. Maurice)  

Silent film director and railway labor organizer Richard D. Maurice was born in Cuba in 1893, migrated to the US in 1903, and settled in Detroit where he worked as a tailor. In July 1920 he founded the Maurice Film Company at 184 High Street, and produced two feature films released a decade apart. Eleven P.M., his surviving feature, is a surreal melodrama in which a poor violinist named Sundaisy (Maurice) tries to protect an orphan girl (Wanda Maurice) who is victimized by petty criminals.

Many Black filmmakers during the silent era adopted stylistic conventions of Victorian theater, but Maurice's innovative use of location filming, extreme camera angles, fantasy imagery, and kaleidoscopic special effects closely resemble avant-garde European films of the 1920s. Eleven P.M. will be presented with a live musical score, composed and performed by pianist Alvin Waddles. (58 min.) 

This program is part of a companion series of film and music events presented in celebration of Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971, on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts Feb. 4–June 23, 2024. Regeneration is organized by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.