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Murder in Harlem

Sat Feb 15 7:00PM - 9:00PM
Oscar Micheaux's powerful detective story is a still-relevant indictment of institutional racism in its depiction of a Black man wrongly accused of murder.
Sat Feb 15
7:00PM - 9:00PM

This year, the festival celebrates the work and influence of Oscar Micheaux with this film alongside The Notorious Elinor Lee and a documentary on his life in Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking. 

In Murder in Harlem, the lifeless body of a white woman is discovered by a Black night watchman at a chemical factory. The police quickly pin the crime on him in what appears to be an open-and-shut case. Or so it appears until the watchman’s sister asks a former beau, who is now a lawyer, to dig into the matter. 

Based on a notorious 1913 real-life case that preoccupied the filmmaker, Murder in Harlem is Micheaux's remake of his own 1921 film The Gunsaulus Mystery, now considered to be lost.  

Director
Oscar Micheaux
Duration
102 min
Year
1935
Country
USA
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