: 100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History
for Klaw and Erlanger. With Bert Williams, Odessa Warren Grey, Walker Thompson, and members of J. Directors Edwin Middleton, T. Silent. Bert Williams: 100 Years in Post-Production
At a challenging time of segregation in the fall of 1913, a virtuoso cast of African American performers led by famed Caribbean American entertainer Bert Williams (1874–1922) gathered in the Bronx to make a feature-length motion picture. Produced by Biograph Co. Hunter Hayes, Sam Corker Jr. 1913. After more than an hour of film was shot, the unreleased project was abandoned by its white producers and left forgotten until today. Additionally, nearly 100 remarkable still images of the interracial production were recovered from within the unedited material, providing evidence of an historic effort by a little-known Harlem theatrical community to gain access to the developing medium of moving pictures. Program 100 min. To Save and Project premieres the Museum’s restoration of this lost landmark of film history with an hour-long assemblage of daily rushes and multiple takes. Shot at locations in New York and New Jersey, the comedy centers on Williams’s efforts to win the hand of the local beauty, and boasts among its highlights a two-minute exhibition dance sequence and a cutting-edge display of onscreen affection between its black leads.
