Help pleaseeeeee....Has anyone seen the movie "Within Our Gates" directed by Oscar Micheaux?

Question

Can this film still be good even though it technically (doesnt have the mechanics) to make it strong? What I mean is can this movie still be relevant, good or strong? Give me any feelings, thoughts and feelings about this movie. Thank you so much. I appreciate any type of answers.

please don't tell me a summary of it. I have seen it I don't need a summary.

Answer 1

User Comments:

5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful:-
Oscar Micheaux directed and wrote this powerful story about racial prejudice and its consequences., 11 January 1999

Author: Arthur Hausner ([e-mail]) from Pine Grove, California


I was deeply affected by parts of this story about the plight of negroes as told for negroes by ***** director Oscar Micheaux. Ostensibly, it's about a woman who tries to help a poor southern school for negroes by getting financial help to supplement the meager amount the state provides, but it is laced with observations about racial prejudice. One bigoted southern woman living in the north is against the women's suffrage movement for fear that ***** women will get the right to vote. And she expresses her negative sentiment about educating negroes: "Thinking will give them a headache." Micheaux gets more points across in the best part of the film, the flashback scene near the end prefaced with a title card "Sylvia's Story." We see how a ***** preacher agrees with some condescending whites that the negroes should keep their place, but privately condemns himself for doing so, announcing that "negroes and whites are equal" to himself. We see how injustice reigns with a lynch mob and how the innocent, even an innocent bystander, can easily become victims of racial prejudice. The film is worth seeing for this sequence alone, providing images that caused me to lose some sleep. Micheaux also slips in comments about the negroes' accomplishments in the Spanish-American and Mexican wars and WWI, as if to bolster the low self-image of his ***** viewers. The film may be primitive by some standards, but Oscar Micheaux tells a powerful story.

The film was intended for ***** audiences, but because of some controversial parts (rape and lynching) many exhibitors refused to show it, so very few saw it when it was released. This being the earliest surviving film made by an African American, it was placed on the National Film Registry and lovingly restored from the only surviving copy in Spain (see the alternative version listing for details). The Library of Congress is to be commended for doing such a fine job.

Answer 2

I'm going to rent it after I watch" The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" a couple of more times.