Program:
THE EXILE (1931, dir. Oscar Micheaux, 93 min.)
THE EXILE is a 1931 American film by Oscar Micheaux with the co-direction of the Dances and Ensemble by Leonard Harper. A drama–romance of the race film genre, it was Micheaux's first feature-length talkie, and the first African American talkie. Adapted from Micheaux's first novel, The Conquest (1913), it has some autobiographical elements: like the film's central character Jean Baptiste (played by Stanley Morrell), Micheaux spent several years as a cattle rancher in an otherwise all-white area of South Dakota.
BLOOD OF JESUS (1941, dir. Spencer Williams, 57 min.)
American race film written by, directed by, and starring Spencer Williams. It was also released under the alternate title of The Glory Road. The Blood of Jesus was the second film directed by Spencer Williams, who was one of the few African American directors of the 1940s. The Blood of Jesus was produced in Texas on a budget of US$5,000. To present the afterlife, Williams used scenes from a 1911 Italian film called L’Inferno that depicted souls entering Heaven. In addition to Williams, the cast was made up of amateur actors and members of Reverend R.L. Robinson’s Heavenly Choir, who sang the film’s gospel music score. The Blood of Jesus was screened in cinemas and in black churches. The film’s commercial success enabled Williams to direct and write additional feature films for Sack Amusement Enterprises, including two films with religious themes: Brother Martin: Servant of Jesus (1942) and Go Down Death (1944). For years, The Blood of Jesus was considered a lost film until prints were discovered in the mid-1980s in a warehouse in Tyler, Texas. Filmmaker Julie Dash cited the baptismal sequence in The Blood of Jesus as the inspiration for a similar scene from her 1991 feature film Daughters of the Dust. In 1991, The Blood of Jesus became the first race film to be added to the U.S. National Film Registry.
Total Run Time: 100 Minutes
