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Film Notes
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Trailer
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W H A T :
W H E N :
Screening at 2:00 pm,
doors open at 1:30 pm
W H E R E :
953 Eden Park Drive, Eden Park/Mt. Adams.
click for Directions & Map
T I C K E T S :
$7 tickets are ONLY available online, by phone, at the Museum, and at the door subject to availability.
ADVANCE TICKETS:
...and at these locations
($9 tix only, cash only),
click each location below for a map:
Sitwell's Coffee House
513 281 7487
Lookout Joe Coffee Roasters
513 871 8626
Shake It Music & Video
513 591 0123
The Bean Haus
859 431 2326
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Midnight Ramble Film Clip
There is no official trailer available. What we have are extracted clips -- so-so video quality and the audio sync is dodgy -- but sufficient to provide an idea of the content. WINDOWS MEDIA This version requires the free Windows Media Player. - High Speed - Medium picture size - Dial Up - Small picture size |
the filmmakers, the films and their impact upon American society.
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IT CONVEYS modern history with an easy-to-follow mix of narration, film clips and interviews. Brief yet comprehensive, without appearing rushed or crowded, MIDNIGHT RAMBLE engages the audience and: This film is for everyone, and in particular will have strong appeal for those who: MANY CINCINNATI AREA RESIDENTS will remember attending, or hearing about, theaters such as the State, Regal, Hippodrome, Lincoln or Pekin. If so, we hope you will stay for the discussion after the film and share your recollections. ADDED ATTRACTION: Along with the documentary and our usual post-film discussion, film historian and MIDNIGHT RAMBLE producer Pamela Thomas will be present to provide additional insight and detail regarding this film and the black film industry. |
Listen or Read
Cincinnati CityBeat picks MIDNIGHT RAMBLE as the Main Event of the week:
"Once upon a time, race dominated the cultural conversation. Race music and race films spoke to and about the African American experience in a dialect that, at least initially, belonged to the race.
"Cincinnati has a unique place in the history and development of these filmed images that deserves recognition, and it is through the exchange of our combined cultural heritage that we all begin to move forward and embrace our common future."
~ TT STERN-ENZI
Read the complete CityBeat story here.
Pamela Thomas
Pamela A. Thomas is a filmmaker, film historian, educator, writer & producer, who originated and co-produced (along with Bestor Cram), the award-winning documentary, MIDNIGHT RAMBLE: Oscar Micheaux and the Story of Race Movies for the PBS documentary series The American Experience.
In addition, she is the founder and Executive Director of BLACK FOLKS MAKE MOVIES, a newly formed non-profit organization utilizing education, screenings, empowerment and history to celebrate and encourage the contributions Black filmmakers have made to American cinema and American history.
As a critical lynchpin bridging the information gap in Black cinema history, MIDNIGHT RAMBLE was 10 years in the making from concept to finished film, nationally broadcast initially on PBS, with subsequent screenings on Turner Classic Movies.
With her interest in race movie history and early Black cinema, Ms. Thomas lectures around the country on the significance and impact of race movies in this country. In addition to her public speaking, research and producing pursuits, Ms. Thomas is founder and executive director of RAW STOCK: Celebrating Cinema, Oakland, CA, a film festival focusing on filmmakers of color locally, nationally, & globally. An annual event, RAW STOCK is based out of Mills College in Oakland.
As producer she is currently working on BLACK LIGHT: The First Century of Black American Cinema, a ten-part series for cable. This is a historical exploration of film contextually demonstrating the visual perception of the Black image from the Black American perspective. In so doing, BLACK LIGHT defines and conceptualizes the impact Black American Cinema has on our culture, our history and American Cinema.
AWARDS
Awards and professional recognition received by Ms. Thomas include: Cine Golden Eagle; Chris Award; National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) Prized Pieces Award; NBPC Community Choice Award for Best Documentary; NBPC Community Choice Award for Best Producer; NEFV Foundation Gold Apple Award and a Silver Hugo.
MORE INFORMATION:
Midnight Ramble / Black Folks Make Movies ~ Pamela Thomas website:
http://blackfolksmakemovies.tripod.com
Contact Pamela Thomas:
513-546-3390
blackfolksmakemovies@yahoo.com
CWC Black Cinema Resources Page: click here.
"Race movies" ~ Oscar Micheaux
"Midnight Rambles" ~ Here comes Hollywood
Ethel Waters, Lena Horne & more...
THE STORY of the filmmakers, actors and their industry told in MIDNIGHT RAMBLE is fascinating and will inspire future entrepreneurs and activists, both within the visual arts and beyond. The documentary is artfully conceived and well-produced, interspersing interviews with segments of works by a variety of African American filmmakers of the period. The film clips are a definite plus, as many of these movies have been partially or completely lost or are very difficult to find. Perhaps most notable is the story of director/producer Oscar Micheaux, who made more than 40 films in thirty years. Read more about Micheaux in the notes that follow.
BLACKS WERE DEPICTED IN MOVING PICTURES since the inception of the art form. Thomas Edison's film group made a short film in 1895 containing black people and the 1899 short Watermelon Contest was the first widely released film that continued the kind of depiction of blacks developed in vaudeville. Beginning with the first film with an all-black cast, William Foster's 1910 The Pullman Porter, the black film industry offered eager African-American audiences across the nation something they had never seen before -- romance, mystery, crime dramas, comedy, vaudeville, westerns and musicals on the big screen featuring all or predominantly black casts.
THESE INDEPENDENTLY MADE FILMS were called "race movies." While not terribly specific, this term was perfectly understood by the public, in much the same way that "race music" was understood decades later to describe the pre-rock-and-roll fusion of blues, shouter, jazz and gospel music fostered by the black community.
IN AN ERA WHEN HOLLYWOOD avoided genuine discussion of controversial issues in our society, many independent black films tackled difficult subjects such as segregation and interracial romance. As a result, black audiences gained insights that white audiences rarely experienced -- via films that dealt realistically with family relationships, societal issues, personal responsbility, faith and religion, race, poverty, crime and alcoholism.
WHILE TECHNICALLY BRILLIANT for its time, D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic film The Birth of a Nation was harshly racist. The fact that the film was copyrighted as "The Birth of a Nation, Or The Clansman" really says it all. Many film historians believe this film was a watershed moment in black cinema history - the angry reaction of the black citizenry to Nation heightened existing demand for independently made black films.
UNWILLING TO ACCEPT the characterizations in Nation, as well as the inaccurate and demeaning stereotypes of blacks conveyed by virtually all Hollywood films at the time, dozens of black film companies were formed. The determination of blacks to take control of how their culture and image were conveyed on the big screen resulted in the creation of films for and about the African American community -- films that were entertaining while portraying black values and life styles in a realistic manner. Ironically, Griffith's film sparked the serious growth of a parallel film industry notable for its independence, prolific output and extent of its distribution system, which included an estimated 450 black-only and another 250 theaters with separated seating.
MADE IN 1918, THE HOMESTEADER, and the 1920 release of WITHIN OUR GATES, have assured a place in history for Oscar Micheaux as the first black American to direct feature films. These silent movies - in terms of direction, acting and production values - have pretty much been panned by film critics, but in a macro perspective this is unimportant. How wonderful if Micheaux's first films had been cinematically equivalent to the original Ben Hur, but in the reality of the times and circumstances this would have been impossible.
WHAT REALLY MATTERS is that Micheaux's work - his books and films - spoke from the heart on sensitive subject matter: discrimination and violence against blacks, interracial relations, ambition, opportunity, etc., with the goal of educating blacks in the art of the possible - that they could accomplish anything they set their minds to. Film historian and critic Armond White tempers criticism of Micheaux by invoking the social context of his work:
"Such films as Body and Soul, Birthright and Within Our Gates were made with the audience's political needs - and its emotional appetite - foremost in Micheaux's consciousness. ... Although Micheaux was from the Midwest, he pursued the interests of Southern blacks. His movies were informed by the social perspectives that developed in the black American south and then spread northward during the Great Migration."
White (who happens to be black) is considered one of America's leading film critics. Read more about Armond White here and here.
THE GRANDSON OF SLAVES, Oscar Micheaux was quite literally a vertical industry encapsulated in one person: Amazingly, he wrote the novels from which his films were made; he assembled the cast, props and locations; he directed the film and sometimes ran the camera; and he edited the final product.
WHEN CONSIDERING THE CHALLENGES faced by early black filmmakers, think for a moment of modern-day individual digital video "filmmakers" whose work appears on YouTube and elsewhere on the web -- then subtract every technological element developed after 1935 and remove every 'digital' audio and video tool from their repertoire. Next, subtract the sound stages, backlots, editing suites, production teams and financial resources of the Hollywood studios that were available in the 1920s. Only then can you gain a true appreciation of what Oscar Micheaux and other independent black filmmakers accomplished with extremely limited technical and financial resources.
IN A WORLD without 24x7 television, computers and the Internet, simply making films was not enough. Finding receptive movie theaters and a way to get the films into them was a key ingredient for filmmaker survival. Again, Oscar Mischeaux played a pioneering role: He personally toured America, visiting segregated theaters and black-only venues, previewing and selling his work, and ulimately establishing a distribution network for his films.
THIS WAS A TIME when megaplex shopping mall cinemas with 20 screens had not been dreamt of. Evolving from handcranked nickelodeons, early movie screens were generally found in vaudeville halls and opera houses. Orchestra pits, organs and pianos were useful elements when showing silent films. As movies with their own sound tracks emerged, innovative (and well-financed) exhibitors tackled the risk of building stand-alone movie houses.
AS WITH VIRTUALLY ALL public assembly venues in the early part of the 20th Century, there were white movie houses and black movie houses. The "Jim Crow" laws enacted principally in the Southern states mandated separate facilities for blacks and whites. In some states these laws were modified for theaters, particularly in towns with a limited number of venues where film exhibitors wanted to capture ticket revenue from black and white audiences. Phyllis C. Benton, on her website midnightramble.com, offers this snippet (without specifying the particular state, but possibly her native Arkansas) titled "Jim Crow Laws Regarding Theaters":
"Every person...operating...any public hall, theater, opera house, motion picture show or any place of public entertainment or public assemblage which is attended by both white and colored persons, shall separate the white race and the colored race and shall set apart and designate...certain seats therein to be occupied by white persons and a portion thereof , or certain seats therein, to be occupied by colored persons. "
Benton provides a personal/family perspective on attending "race movies," describes "midnight rambles" and also has a list of available relevant film titles. Definitely worth a visit: midnightramble.com
RAMBLING AT MIDNIGHT. The term used for the title of this documentary film, MIDNIGHT RAMBLE, comes directly from the phrase describing the presentation of films for blacks throughout the south: "Race movies" and other all-black cast pictures were shown between 12 midnight and 2 AM. The custom of attending films in this manner was referred to as taking a "Midnight Ramble." Around this time, the collection of venues for blacks in the South, featuring vaudeville and drama, was known as the Chitlin Circuit. Later, as movies took hold, according to an executive with RKO the network of theatres in the south showing "race movies" came to be known as the Midnight Ramble Circuit.
CINCINNATI SIDEBAR: A derivation of the Midnight Ramble theme surfaced in Cincinnati in the 1970s, in the music business. Local concert promoter Ross Todd created a series of "Midnight Boogies" -- concerts featuring black artists such as Patti La Belle, the Funkadelics, etc., that began at 10 PM and ended at 3 or 4 AM. These popular concerts, attended by mostly blacks and some whites, were presented at the old U.C. Armory Fieldhouse and also at Riverfront Coliseum in the years spanning 1975-1980.
HERE COMES HOLLYWOOD, AGAIN. The success of race movies and the independent black filmmakers was not ignored by the big studio executives and as the sound era in films took hold, Hollywood started making black cast movies, mainly musicals. As silent films were replaced by the very expensive to make "talkies," Oscar Micheaux was the only black movie producer to survive the transition. The Great Depression of the 1930s impacted virtually every form of enterprise in America, and black filmmakers - already working with shoe-string budgets - were not spared. The combination of economic hard times and competition from Hollywood precipitated the decline of race movies and the black film industry.
TASTES WERE CHANGING as well. The "Great Migration" of blacks from the rural south (estimated at 40% of the total southern black population) to the urban north saw African-American numbers in northern urban centers swell by 300% or more. Black audience interests began to shift from rural to city themes. Hollywood produced a number of black-cast musical films addressing this transition: Hallelujah (King Vidor, 1929), The Green Pastures (Marc Connelly, 1936), Cabin in the Sky (Vincent Minnelli, 1943) and Stormy Weather (Andrew Stone, 1943) are prime examples. Hollywood's black cast films were less daring, more polished and generally forumla-driven renditions of standard comedy, musical and mystery themes.
ACTORS AND MUSICAL PERFORMERS, such as Ethel Waters, Ester Rolle, Bill Robinson, Lena Horne, Hattie McDaniel, and Paul Robeson; musicians/band leaders such as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, etc., all received prominent billing in Hollywood movies. But race movie purists lamented the lack of substance in these films as well as the reintroduction of some stereotypes. World War II saw the beginning of a shift from Hollywood's focus on segregated (race movie) audiences to more integrated filmmaking. This was driven by NAACP pressure on Hollywood studios, President Roosevelt's creation of the Commission on Fair Employment and also by the raw number of blacks participating in the War. As a result, the number of all-black Hollywood films decreased, as did the number of independently produced race movies. The offset was minor, with only a nominal increase in roles available to African Americans in Hollywood films.
THIS VOID WAS FILLED to some degree by the emergence of "message movies" reflecting the rise of integrationist politics at the time. Examples are Home of the Brave (Mark Robson, 1949), Lost Boundaries (Alfred Werker, 1949) and No Way Out (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1950). While these films were an attempt to address racism, Hollywood at that time did not substantially pursue the issues faced by the growing number of urban blacks.
MIDNIGHT RAMBLE does not address black cinema beyond 1950. This subject, which necessarily includes corresponding American history for the ensuing period, is covered voluminously in contemporary research and educational literature. We invite you to pursue the topic via the Internet, your public library or various courses and programs at area universities and institutions.