Hot Biskits
Pioneers of African-American Cinema • 10m
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 lay hidden in the archives of The Library of Congress, until Pioneers curator Jacqueline Stewart revealed the divergent spelling of the title (which had caused the film to resist being located within the archive’s database).
Up Next in Pioneers of African-American Cinema
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Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled
R.W. Phillips • United States • 1918
A clever knockabout comedy.
One of Ebony Film Corporation’s most ambitious comedies is, like most of their surviving work, tragically marred by the decomposition of the nitrate film stock. Fortunately, enough of the storyline shines through so that it may st...
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Ten Minutes to Live
Oscar Micheaux • United States • 1932
An early experiment in sound cinema.
Resisting the stagebound atmosphere of The Exile, Oscar Micheaux found ways to shoot a talking picture on location, without cumbersome and expensive audio recording equipment. He did this by making one of his characters ...
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Ten Nights in a Bar Room
Roy Calnek • United States • 1926
A masterful vision of alcohol addition.
Based on the hugely popular 1854 temperance novel by Timothy Shay Arthur (and William W. Pratt’s 1858 stage adaptation), Roy Calnek’s TEN NIGHTS IN A BAR ROOM boasts a masterful performance by Charles Sidney Gilpin as a f...
