Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking

This year, the festival celebrates the work and influence of Oscar Micheaux with this documentary alongside special screenings of Murder in Harlem and The Notorious Elinor Lee. 

Oscar Micheaux was the most influential African American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century. The= self-taught artist funded, produced, and released more than 40 films, all while completely excluded from the Hollywood systems of production and distribution. Francesco Zippel’s revealing documentary (which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival) charts Micheaux’s incredible artistic journey, as he followed the urban migration to Chicago, abandoned city life to become a homesteader in South Dakota, and eventually became a resolute storyteller, writing six novels and producing dozens of feature films before his death in 1951. Regardless of the genre in which he was working, Micheaux’s provocative films served as a powerful rebuke to the ubiquitous racism of the times. In Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking, a chorus of experts and fans—from Chuck D to Melvin van Peebles—weigh in on the incredible legacy of the man whom cinema scholar Jacqueline Stewart describes as “the most important Black filmmaker who ever lived. Period.”