Filed under: Movies, Interviews
Currently playing on the cable channel TCM is an amazing new documentary series called 'Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood,' which tells the epic story of the people, power and periods that created the Hollywood dynasty.
A seven part-series, tonight's episode (Nov. 22), which is titled 'Brother Can You Spare A Dream,' features a segment on pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.
Telling his story is film historian Donald Bogle, who's currently an instructor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bogle is also the author of six books concerning African Americans in film and on television including 'Brown Sugar: Eighty Years of America's Black Female Superstars,' and 'Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood.'
BlackVoices.com recently spoke with the Philadelphia native as he talked about the foundation Oscar Micheaux started for many Blacks in the film industry, as well as the racism that existed in the early years.
What does Oscar Micheaux mean to today's youth? When people start talking about black actors what do you think he represents? To be honest, I don't think Oscar is mentioned as much as he should be.
Donald Bogle: Well, I just showed an Oscar Micheaux movie to my class at the University of Pennsylvania about two weeks ago. In certain academic film courses... and believe me, it's been a struggle to get him recognized. I think you do want to know something about your own history, and you don't want to believe African Americans in the movies start with Denzel Washington or Halle Berry or even Spike Lee in the 80s, an independent filmmaker. It doesn't start with the blaxploitation era when Melvin Van Peebles did 'Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song ,' or when Gordon Parks Sr. did 'Shaft' or when Gordon Parks Jr. did 'Superfly.'
It goes way back, and Oscar Micheaux is this pioneering figure. The great thing about him is that for one, he was there and second, he could not work in Hollywood. He wanted to make movies, and he wanted to make movies than what Hollywood was giving audiences; movies that deal with the African American experience. Here was a man who could not go to film schools like NYU or UCLA; he couldn't do that. He was fired up with this burning desire to make movies and he went against the odds. He had to get financing for these films... how do you get money? Movies are a very expensive venture, and they didn't cost as much then as they cost now but they still cost money. He had to go out and raise money and then gather a cast and shoot the film. Then when it was done he had to see that the films got into theaters! I mean, he was a one-man studio. He had to reach distributors, exhibitors. He should be a beacon of inspiration. We have a whole generation of people in film school, African Americans, who see film mainly in a sense with what they know of Spike Lee from the 80s. They do see the possibility of having careers in film as producers and writers and directors. They should understand that there was a man before them who didn't have that option who did it, who got movies made. The interesting thing about Micheaux is it's been estimated there were about 45 Oscar Micheaux films, and only maybe 15 movies exist. Maybe we'll discover more because his movie 'Within Our Gates' was missing for decades and was rediscovered in Spain in the 90s.
What's next on your end?
DB: I have a book that's scheduled to come out in early 2011, I think sometime in February. Right now we have the bound page proofs, but that's scheduled to come out.