Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled
Pioneers of African-American Cinema • 13m
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 still be appreciated as a clever knockabout comedy, and not solely as a crumbling historical relic. The innocuous caricatures of the Egyptians in this film and the Chinese laundryman in A Reckless Rover suggest Pollard & Co. abided by the belief that turnabout is fair play.
Up Next in Pioneers of African-American Cinema
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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...
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The Blood of Jesus
Spencer Williams • United States • 1941
A surreal, poignant parable.
The first feature by director/actor Spencer Williams, THE BLOOD OF JESUS, is a rural religious parable in which a woman, accidentally shot by her husband (Williams), travels to the crossroads of the hereafter, and faces the te...
