Richard Maurice • United States • 1928
A surreal melodrama with one of cinema's strangest endings.
Produced in Detroit, Michigan by little-known African-American filmmaker Richard Maurice, ELEVEN P.M. is a surreal melodrama in which a poor violinist named Sundaisy (Maurice) tries to protect an orphaned girl (Wanda Maurice) from a small-time hoodlum. The story, which may or may not be a dream concocted by a struggling newspaperman, has one of the most bizarre endings in film history, when the spirit of the deceased Sundaisy possesses the body of a dog in order to take vengeance upon the crook.
Eloyce Gist, James Gist • United States • 1935
A long-lost follow-up to HELL-BOUND TRAIN.
It was only during the HD restoration of HELL-BOUND TRAIN for this collection that film historian S. Torriano Berry realized that among the 35 mixed rolls of film in the Gist collection were the fragments...
Eloyce Gist, James Gist • United States • 1930
Arguably the most significant discovery in our Pioneers set.
Arguably the most significant rediscovery in Pioneers of African-American Cinema. The film is the work of self-taught filmmakers James and Eloyce Gist, African-American evangelists who em...
Spencer Williams • United States • 1931
A one-reel comedy short about high-stakes mini-golf.
Virtually unseen for more than 80 years, Spencer Williams’s first film is a one-reel comedy short in which a rivalry between two men is played out in a high-stakes game of mini-golf. For years, the film...
