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Oscar Micheaux, Micheaux Book and Film, opened Chicago January 1920. Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) tries to raise money for a Southern school and is pulled back into a lynching she survived. Library of Congress calls it the earliest known surviving feature directed by an African American. The print we have is a Spanish one, La Negra; most English titles were rebuilt in 1993 from Micheaux's novels and Body and Soul. Chicago's board sat on it for months. The Defender later advertised that 1,200 feet had already been cut.
In two programmes
The camera is evidence. Micheaux answers Birth of a Nation with a lynching filmed as something that happened, not something that was feared. It sits next to Griffith on purpose. Watch the flashback: the lynching cut against an assault, Griffith's rescue rhythm with the rescue taken out.
The answer to Griffith, made with Griffith's tools. The lynching is cut against an assault the way Birth of a Nation cut a rescue, and nobody arrives. The Spanish print is what survives, which is its own comment on who kept it.
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