“100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History” Exhibition
The Museum of Modern Art
This event has ended.
The Museum of Modern Art announces the discovery of previously unidentified, 101-year-old film footage, the earliest known surviving feature film with a cast of black actors. The unedited daily rushes—multiple “takes” shot each day during production—were found among a trove of 900 negatives from the pioneering Biograph Studio that were acquired by MoMA’s founding Film curator, Iris Barry, in 1939, just prior to their scheduled destruction following the closure of Biograph’s Bronx facilities. Though a few other movies from that period featuring black casts, such as William Foster’s The Pullman Porter (1913) and Hunter C. Haynes’s Uncle Remus’ First Visit to New York (1914) are known to have been filmed, all are considered lost. The discovery of the 1913 rushes launched a multiyear research project to identify the production, its actors, and its crew, led by Ron Magliozzi, Associate Curator, and Peter Williamson, Preservation Officer, Department of Film, MoMA.
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Schedule
from October 24, 2014 to March 01, 2015