Sign-In
Cart
The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Paperback
ISBN13: 9781644392010
Publisher: Indoeuropeanpublishing.Com
Published: Jun 12 2019
Pages: 196
Weight: 0.65
Height: 0.45 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (January 2, 1884 - March 25, 1951) was an African-American 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 film, 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 when the industry changed to incorporate speaking actors.
Micheaux was born near Metropolis, Illinois and grew up in Great Bend, Kansas, one of eleven children of former slaves. As a young boy, he shined shoes and worked as a porter on the railway. As a young man, he very successfully homesteaded a farm in an all-white area of South Dakota, where he began writing stories. Micheaux overcame many of the racist attitudes and restrictions on African-American publishers and authors by forming his own publishing company to sell his books door-to-door.
The advent of the motion picture industry intrigued him as a vehicle to tell his stories. He formed his own movie production company and, in 1919, became the first African-American to make a film. He wrote, directed and produced the silent motion picture, The Homesteader, starring pioneering African-American actress Evelyn Preer, based on his novel of the same name. He used autobiographical elements in The Exile, his first feature film with sound, in which the central character leaves Chicago to buy and operate a ranch in South Dakota. In 1924, his film, Body and Soul, introduced the movie-going public to Paul Robeson.
Given the times, his accomplishments in publishing and film are extraordinary, including being the first African American to produce a film to be shown in white movie theaters. In his motion pictures, he moved away from the Negro stereotypes being portrayed in film at the time. In his film Within Our Gates, Micheaux attacked the racism depicted in the D.W. Griffith film, The Birth of a Nation.
The Producers Guild of America called him The most prolific black - if not most prolific independent - filmmaker in American cinema. During his illustrious career, Oscar Micheaux wrote, produced and directed forty-four feature-length films between 1919 and 1948 and wrote seven novels.
3 different editions
Also available
Also in
Plays
Four Comedies: The Taming of the Shrew, a Midsummer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem
Miller, Arthur
Paperback
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Paperback
The Laramie Project and the Laramie Project: Ten Years Later
Fondakowski, Leigh
Pierotti, Greg
Kaufman, Moises
Paperback
FRANKENSTEIN or The Modern Prometheus (The Revised 1831 Edition - Wisehouse Classics)
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paperback
Four Major Plays: A Doll's House/Ghosts/Hedda Gabler/The Master Builder
Ibsen, Henrik
McFarlane, James
Arup, Jens
Paperback
A Doll's House and Other Plays: With Pillars of the Community, Ghosts and an Enemy of the People
Ibsen, Henrik
Paperback
KJV, Pew Bible, Large Print, Hardcover, Burgundy, Red Letter Edition (Large Print Edition)
Thomas Nelson
Hardcover
Our Town and the Cosmic One-Acts: The Long Christmas Dinner, the Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, and Pullman Car Hiawatha
Wilder, Thornton
Paperback
Five Plays: Ivanov, the Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and the Cherry Orchard
Chekhov, Anton
Hingley, Ronald
Paperback