045 Within Our Gates (1920)

On this episode of Retro Grade Podcast, we talk about a movie over 100 years old. We talk about the oldest surviving film from a Black director. The movie is Oscar Micheaux’s Within Out Gates from 1920. This is the first silent film we’ve done on the podcast, and also a film neither of the hosts had even heard about until visiting the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. We wanted to really focus on a Black filmmaker for the last episode that will be released during Black history month, and could not have picked a better one than Oscar Micheaux The film is about a young Black woman named Sylvia who works as a school teacher and must try to raise money to save her school, however events of her past continue to haunt her. When the film was released, it was met with praise, but also contempt, censorship and outright banned by some theaters in fear that it would reignite race riots like the ones in Chicago in 1919, and was thought to be lost to history until accidentally discovered in Spain in the 1970’s. However, just 5 years before, D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation was met with praise, financial success, unsuccessfully banned, endorsed by the President, made its place in history as one of the first feature length films in history.. AND ALSO depicted the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic force that preserved American virtue, was used to recruit new members into the KKK, and ignited riots that left at least one Black teenager dead in Lafayette, Indiana. If Within Our Gates was meant to depict multiple representations of the African-American experience, why was it met with such hostility and neglect? What does it say about us as a Nation We discuss why the film was so controversial, who Oscar Micheaux was, what the historical context for the film was (including its bizarre final two minutes,) and how despite being over 100 years old, the film’s themes and side stories hold up better than some other ones we have covered. Hope you enjoy! Music is from Triune Digital and audio clips pulled from movies we will be reviewing in other episodes. Artwork by @jannelle_o