The Complete Oscar Micheaux: Swing! (1932)
Director: Oscar Micheaux Run Time: 68 min. Rating: NR
Starring: Cora Green, Dorothy Van Engle, Hazel Diaz
Country: United States
Language: English
The Complete Oscar Micheaux, presented from Thursday, September 19—Saturday, September 28, 2024. The program concludes with a limited engagement of the 2021 documentary Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking on Sunday, September 29.
About the film:
After a woman discovers her no-good beau is two-timing her, she sets her sights on Harlem to make it big as the lead of a show but becomes a diva just as the producer is trying to bring the show to Broadway.
“Micheaux liked to inject melodrama into even his breeziest scenarios: when the star breaks her leg falling down some stairs, she screams bloody murder, as if she’d been taken on a ride by the whole Ku Klux Klan.”
— Richard Corliss, Time Magazine
Elvera Sanchez Davis—the mother of famed actor, comedian, dancer, and musician Sammy Davis Jr.—has a small role in the film as a tap dancer. This presentation is a beautiful 2K master from materials preserved by the Library of Congress.
About the filmmaker:
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an author, film writer and director, and independent producer of more than 44 silent films and sound films from 1919—1948. Micheaux was the first African American filmmaker to produce a full feature-length film and is regarded as a prominent producer of race films, and the most successful African American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century. Micheaux’s work is not only a milestone in African American cinema, but an incredible insight into American history regarding race in society.
Born in 1884 to enslaved parents, Micheaux first left home to work for the railroads in Chicago. He had his sight set higher as a writer and a determined creative. He wrote a series of novels, including his self-published The Homesteader. Not only was Micheaux a pioneer in African American cinema, but also in independent publishing and filmmaking. After turning down offers to produce his novel into a film, he later found his own path to producing the 1919 film. Micheaux serves as a symbol of triumphing over the circumstances at hand to bring his vision to reality. The groundbreaking auteur’s features include The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920), Body and Soul (1925), Within Our Gates (1920) and Birthright (1938).
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