MBC Interactive Archive Project:
WITHIN OUR GATES
(Co-presented by The Wolfsonian–Florida International University and the Miami Beach Film Society)
The story of an idealistic Black schoolteacher, Oscar Micheaux's 1920 WITHIN OUR GATES—censored when originally released, and now celebrated as a key work of early Black cinema by a pathbreaking director—was a fierce rebuke to the white supremacy glorified in racist films like Birth of a Nation. Screen a restored version of the film scored by DJ Spooky and get a brief intro to a new virtual exhibition, co-produced with The Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab, that explores the confident and creative “new negro” identity asserted by Harlem Renaissance figures whose careers ran parallel to Micheaux's.
*Content warning: The film includes scenes of mob violence, murder, and attempted rape*