We salute Black History Month with a screening of ‘Within Our Gates’ (1920), the landmark drama from pioneer African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. The plot features an African-American woman who goes North in an effort to raise money for a rural school in the Deep South for poor black children. Her romance with a black doctor eventually leads to revelations about her family’s past and her own mixed-race, European ancestry.
This film is showing as part of our Silents, Please! repertory film series.
Supplying music will be silent film accompanist Jeff Rapsis, who specializes in creating live scores for silent film screenings at venues around New England and beyond.
In the tradition of theatre organists of the 1920s, Rapsis improvises each film’s score on the spot, making up the music as the movie is screened. Rapsis uses a digital synthesizer to create the texture of a full orchestra.
