Hello, my name is Justin the Klu, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club. And today, we're going to go silent with Oscar Michaud.

That was a great joke. You know, he didn't plan that in advance. That just came out.

Was it difficult for you not to laugh when you heard the day?

No, it was because I know, like any good scene partner, I know, like, I know my cues.

Yeah, okay.

I didn't make eye contact with you because I didn't want to give the big.

I didn't make eye contact because I was so ashamed.

So Oscar Michaud is often credited as one of the first great American black directors.

There were several black directors before him.

He was the first one to make a really successful movie.

And he's also, his film within our gates is the earliest existing movie that we have that hasn't been lost by a black filmmaker feature length.

And he's credited often as a revolutionary, but at the same time, you know, his movies

are historically important, but they're not very good.

Well, some of them are very good.

Yes.

And others of them are very interesting.

He's been called everything from the Jackie Robinson of cinema.

He's been called the Black D.W. Griffith. Or the Black Ed Wood. Or the Black Ed Wood.

And definitely the big demarcation point is the silent era and the sound era. After the sound came in,

the movies and his circumstances became a little more impoverished. The movie is starting to get a little dodgier.

But even then, they remained interesting and revealing and sometimes quite disturbing and upsetting.

...