Oscar Micheaux

A look at the extraordinary achievements and contemporary legacy of Oscar Micheaux, a pioneer of the African-American film industry.

Ted Gregory is trying to be the first black producer to mount a show on Broadway, but he has trouble with his star singer.

Eve Mason, a white-passing black woman, moves to a remote cottage she inherited from her late father. She makes the acquaintance of her neighbor, a dashing black settler named Hugh Van Allen, and quickly falls for him. Trouble brews as the local cadre of racist hucksters want the valuable land Van Allen lives on, and will do anything to take it from him.

Abandoned by her fiancé, an educated black woman with a traumatizing past dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished black children.

Gangsters use a woman to get to a boxer and convince him to throw a big fight.

An undercover government agent on a case in Mississippi meets and falls in love with a beautiful young woman who's being menaced by a local crime boss.

A movie producer offers a nightclub singer a role in his latest film, but all he really wants to do is bed her. She knows, but accepts anyway. Meanwhile, a patron at the club gets a note saying that she'll soon get another note, and that she will be killed ten minutes after that.

Naomi, a light-skinned Black child, is abandoned by her mother and raised by the virtuous Mrs. Saunders. When the girl's fixation with whiteness turns her against her own race, she is sent to a convent. Hopelessly in love with her adoptive brother Jimmie, Naomi consents to marry his friend, but is repulsed by his darker skin and unrefined ways.

Aileen Kennibrew, a charming and beautiful girl calls on one Richard Ellis, a motion picture producer, who is impressed by her modesty, refined personality and striking carriage and is persuaded to "try" her out in the movies. She makes good, and altho' elevated after a few pictures to stardom, becomes obsessed with an overwhelming desire to go on the stage. Finally securing a part with a dramatic stock company, she fall in love with a character man, who, unknown to her, is of degenerate character. Giving him all her love, however, she sets out to reform him with the usual result—but that's the story!

When Arthur Gilpin, a black night watchman, finds young Myrtle Gunsaulus mysteriously murdered in the basement of a factory, he is charged with the crime. The film is now believed to be lost.

George Eldridge Van Paul, the son of a white father and a black mother, is brought up to believe that he is completely white. He falls in love with Hester Morgan, a black girl, but when she learns that he is white, she refuses to see him. Considered a lost film.

A convict escapes to a Southern town and passes himself off as a reverend, giving him the perfect cover to swindle the townspeople and corrupt an innocent young woman.

A Son of Satan is a 1924 silent race film directed, written, produced and distributed by Oscar Micheaux. The film follows the misadventures of a man who accepted a bet to spend a night in a haunted house. Micheaux shot the film in The Bronx, New York, and Roanoke, Virginia. A Son of Satan ran into distribution problems when state censorship boards rejected the film based on its contents. New York censors objected to the film’s depiction of violence, particularly against women and animals (a cat is killed onscreen in one scene, a Ku Klux Klan leader is slain and a man chokes his wife to death), while Virginia censors complained the film’s references to miscegenation would "prove offensive to Southern ladies". In at least one state the film was banned for its title alone No print of the film is known to exist and it is presumed to be a lost film.

A Black night watchman at a chemical factory finds the body of a murdered white woman. After reporting it, he finds himself accused of the murder.

A nightclub singer refuses to "date" customers, so she's framed for the murder of her aunt.

A young Southern college student falls for the charms of a female nightclub owner while on summer break in Chicago - and soon enough meets her club co-owner boyfriend and his gangster pals.

A US cavalry officer rescues a mulatto girl, raised in Africa, from slavers.

After graduating from Harvard University, Peter Siner returns to his small Tennessee hometown, where he hopes to start a school for black children.

A young woman plans to marry, but her mother and brother--a lawyer--don't like her prospective husband and scheme to prevent the marriage.

With a series of long takes and frontal camera set-ups, Micheaux provides a record of several cabaret acts, using intertitles to separate the individual numbers. This quietly outrageous film begins with the high-toned Heywood Choir singing "Watermelon time" and concludes with Amon Davis playing a preacher using heavy blackface. Amon Davis was known as "the Back Biting Comedian, Par Excellence", and his sermon is one of Micheaux's many notable send-ups of the clergy.

Film producer Winston L. Jaune gives his brother J. Lee a job in his company. J. Lee promptly steals company funds, spends lavishly in cabarets, at wild parties, and on women putting the company in financial difficulties.

Gangsters in Harlem make plans to commit a kidnapping.

An idealistic young man is torn between a sultry Chicago nightclub owner and a Scottish South Dakotan farmgirl.

The brute is a gambler, boxing manager and underworld boss who mistreats a young woman. She is forced into marriage with him for money after her original fiance is thought dead. When that man returns, he attempts to rescue her.