Midnight Ramble (film)
''Midnight Ramble'' is a 1994 documentary about the early history of Black American movies from the period between 1910 and 1950. Known as " race movies", these films, traditionally independent of Hollywood, were made primarily by, for and about the black community. This documentary is a tribute to a film genre that lasted for more than 40 years, produced over 500 movies, and created a foundation for contemporary films from directors such as Spike Lee and Tyler Perry. James Avery narrates this exploration of the early black film industry. There is a mistaken assumption that "race films" began largely in reaction to D. W. Griffith's 1915 ''The Birth of a Nation''. Nothing could be further from the truth. Race movies actually began around 1910 in Chicago in response to the Black Community longing to see themselves reflected on the silver screen via this new medium of film. Wanting to see themselves through their own eyes, on their own terms thus counteracting the Hollywood stereotyp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pearl Bowser
Pearl Bowser (born 1931) is an author, collector, television director, film scholar, film director, producer, filmmaker, independent distributor and film archivist. Along with her peers Mel Roman and Charles Hobson, Bowser researched and curated “The Black Film” retrospective at the Jewish Museum in 1970. This prompted a new wave of public interest into “exhibiting, producing, and engaging with African American cinema beyond borders”. Most of her exalted career was spent traveling the globe in order to cultivate audiences for marginalized filmmakers. An example of her efforts, and also her most groundbreaking work, manifested in her research on “early-1900s Black film pioneer Oscar Micheaux”. This research can be seen in her book on the first ten years of the career of Oscar Micheaux, an African-American who directed 40 "race pictures" between 1918 and 1940. She is thus credited for having helped rediscover some of Oscar Micheaux's rare surviving films. She is the founder ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (; January 2, 1884 – March 25, 1951) was an author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and controlled by black filmmakers, Micheaux is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, a prominent producer of race films, and has been described as "the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century". He produced both silent films and sound films. Early life and education Micheaux was born on a farm in Metropolis, Illinois, on January 2, 1884.Betti Carol VanEpps-Taylor, ''Oscar Micheaux – A Biography: Dakota Homesteader, Author, Pioneer Film Maker'' Da ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1994 Films
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Mandela casts his vote in the 1994 South African general election, in which he was elected South Africa's first president, and which effectively brought Apartheid to an end; NAFTA, which was signed in 1992, comes into effect in Canada, the United States, and Mexico; The first passenger rail service to utilize the newly-opened Channel tunnel; The 1994 FIFA World Cup is held in the United States; Skulls from the Rwandan genocide, in which over half a million Tutsi people were massacred by Hutus., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 1994 Winter Olympics rect 200 0 400 200 Northridge earthquake rect 400 0 600 200 Sinking of the MS Estonia rect 0 200 300 400 Rwandan genocide rect 300 200 600 400 Nelson Mandela rect 0 400 200 600 1994 FIFA ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database. The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services (such as resource sharing and collection management). WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public. , WorldCat contained over 540 million bibliographic records in 483 languages, representing over 3 billion physical and digital library assets, and the WorldCat persons dataset (Data mining, mined from WorldCat) included over 100 million people. History OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing bus ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Duke
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranked below princess nobility and grand dukes. The title comes from French ''duc'', itself from the Latin ''dux'', 'leader', a term used in republican Rome to refer to a military commander without an official rank (particularly one of Germanic or Celtic origin), and later coming to mean the leading military commander of a province. In most countries, the word ''duchess'' is the female equivalent. Following the reforms of the emperor Diocletian (which separated the civilian and military administrations of the Roman provinces), a ''dux'' became the military commander in each province. The title ''dux'', Hellenised to ''doux'', survived in the Eastern Roman Empire where it continued in several contexts, signifying a rank equivalent to a captai ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. It is a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by the Connecticut Colony, the Collegiate School was established in 1701 by clergy to educate Congregational ministers before moving to New Haven in 1716. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale's faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate coll ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Edna Mae Harris
Edna Mae Harris (September 29, 1914 – September 15, 1997), sometimes credited as Edna May Harris was an American actress and singer. Harris was one of the first African–American film actress of the late 1930s and early 1940s, appearing in films featuring mostly African–American casts. Biography Early life and career Born in Harlem, Harris parents were Sam, a boxer and customs inspector; Her mother Mary Harris (née Walker) worked as a maid. Harris' family is noted as one of the first families to have migrated to Harlem. Settling near the Lafayette Theater, Harris was convinced into pursuing a career in show business by Ethel Waters and Maud Russell who were frequent visitors to her family home. After being coached on her singing and dancing by Waters and Russell, Harris began performing in the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA). An African-American vaudeville circuit, Harris performed with TOBA from 1929 until 1933. Harris attended Wadleigh High School (later k ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Herb Jeffries
Herb Jeffries (born Umberto Alexander Valentino; September 24, 1913 – May 25, 2014) was an American actor of film and television and popular music and jazz singer-songwriter, known for his baritone voice. He starred in several low-budget "race" Western feature films aimed at black audiences, '' Harlem on the Prairie'' (1937), ''Two-Gun Man from Harlem'' (1938), ''Rhythm Rodeo'' (1938), ''The Bronze Buckaroo'' (1939) and ''Harlem Rides the Range'' (1939). He also acted in several other films and television shows. During his acting career he was usually billed as Herbert Jeffrey (sometimes "Herbert Jeffries" or "Herbert Jeffries, Sensational Singing Cowboy"). In the 1940s and 1950s Jeffries recorded for a number of labels, including RCA Victor, Exclusive, Coral, Decca, Bethlehem, Columbia, Mercury and Trend. His album ''Jamaica'', recorded by RKO, is a concept album of self-composed calypso songs. Early life and ethnicity Jeffries was born Umberto Alexander Valentino in Detr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carlton Moss
Carlton Moss (February 14, 1909 – August 10, 1997) was an African-American screenwriter, actor and film director. Moss directed the documentary ''Frederick Douglass: The House on Cedar Hill''. Biography Moss was raised in both North Carolina and Newark. He attended Morgan State University, where he formed an acting troupe called "Toward a Black Theater". In 1936 he was one of a triumvirate of African-American theatre artists who led the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project after the departure of John Houseman. Houseman recommended Moss for the position, later describing him as "skillful, progressive, educated and sensitive to every changing breeze of Harlem opinion." Moss directed a successful production of ''The Show-Off'' (1937), its first presentation under the new leadership, at the Lafayette Theatre. Later he wrote '' The Negro Soldier'' for Frank Capra, a 1944 propaganda film encouraging racial harmony among World War II soldiers and specifically encour ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elton Fax
Elton Clay Fax (October 9, 1909 – May 13, 1993) was an American illustrator, cartoonist, and writer. Early life and education Elton Clay Fax was born in 1909, in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Mark Oakland Fax and Willie Estelle Fax. His father was a stevedore at the Baltimore Railroad Depot; his mother was a seamstress. Elton Fax graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1926, where he was classmates with Cab Calloway, who became a noted musician. Fax first attended Claflin College, a historically black college in Orangeburg, South Carolina, but transferred north to Syracuse University in New York state. There he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1931. Soon after college he was featured in a solo art show at the offices of the ''Baltimore Afro-American'' newspaper. Career Elton Fax taught art at the Harlem Community Art Center in New York beginning in 1934. He also worked with the Works Project Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project, a government financial ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |