Writing Himself Into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences
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Book Overview
Winner of the 2001 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Awards Winner of the Theatre Library Association Award
Writing Himself Into History is an eagerly anticipated analysis of the career and artistry surrounding the legendary Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. With the exception of Spike Lee, Micheaux is the most famous--and prolific--African American film director. Between 1918 and 1948 he made more than 40 "race pictures," movies made for and about African Americans. A man of immense creativity, he also wrote seven novels. Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence concentrate here on the first decade of Micheaux's career, when Micheaux produced and directed more than twenty silent features and built a reputation as a controversial and maverick entrepreneur. Placing his work firmly within his social and cultural milieu, they also examine Micheaeux's family and life. The authors provide a close textual analysis of his surviving films (including The Symbol of the Unconquered, Within Our Gates, and Body and Soul), and highlight the rivalry between studios, dilemmas of assimilation versus separatism, gender issues, and class. In Search of Oscar Micheaux also analyzes Micheaux's career as a novelist in relation to his work as a filmmaker. This is a much-awaited book that is especially timely as interest in Micheaux's work increases.Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0813528038
ISBN13:9780813528038
Release Date:August 2000
Publisher:Rutgers University Press
Length:280 Pages
Weight:1.05 lbs.
Dimensions:0.9" x 6.2" x 9.3"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
The First Good Book about an Important Director-- & His World
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 24 years ago
Those who are troubled by academic writing may be a little put off by this book--but only just a little. Particularly in the opening pages, the authors go to great pains to make the usual postmodernist genuflections: "how can we possibly know anything?" "do we exist?" etc. Once you get past that, their reconstruction of Micheaux's career and films is wonderful. They not only reconstruct his life as an artist--in the process separating a great deal of fact from self-generated fiction--but they also reconstruct his cultural setting and the context in which his films are released. To my taste, they're a little too easy on Micheaux for his fairly reflectionist notion of cinematic realism. However, they almost convinced that I'm wrong--which is the highest compliment you can pay any work of scholarship.
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