News

In 2015, Kino Lorber launched the successful crowd­funding campaign for “Pioneers of African-American Cinema,” a DVD box set that featured more than 20 feature-length and short films made by groundbreaking African American directors from 1915 to 1946.

The funds raised from the Kickstarter allowed the project to expand from a modest collection of films into a monumental five­-disc collection, loaded with extras and an 80­-page booklet. Now, the entire box set is available to stream on Netflix.

Read More: Kino Lorber Hires Nicholas Kemp as Director of Theatrical Marketing — Exclusive

Showcasing the works of Oscar Micheaux, Spencer Williams, Richard E. Norman and many other legendary helmers, the streaming service includes films features like “Hell-Bound Train,” “Within Our Gates,” “Birthright,” “The Flying Ace” and many other titles. Some like “Hot Biskits” and “the Blood of Jesus” and “Verdict Not Guilty” and “Heaven-Bound Travelers” are also paired together.

“Pioneers of African-American Cinema” was a...

It's arrived -- thanks in part to a successful Kickstarter campaign, this nearly comprehensive compendium of American 'Race Films' is here in a deluxe Blu-ray presentation. Pioneers of African-American Cinema Blu-ray Kino Classics 1915-1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 952 min. / Street Date July 26, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 99.95 Directed by Richard Norman, Richard Maurice, Spencer Williams and Oscar Micheaux

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Black Cinema History? We didn't hear a peep about any such thing back in film school. Sometime in the 1980s PBS would broadcast a barely watchable (see sample just below) copy of a creaky silent 'race movie' about a 'backsliding' black man in trouble with the law, the Lord and his wife in that order. The cultural segregation has been almost complete. It wasn't until even later that I read articles about a long-extinct nationwide circuit of movie theaters catering to black audiences, wherever the populations were big enough to support the trade.

It’s hard to consider the release of a piece of entertainment, specifically a DVD and Blu-ray box set, as a culturally significant moment, but then again there are few items quite like the newest release from the team at Kino Lorber.

After a refreshingly successful Kickstarter campaign, Kino Lorber has finally released their groundbreaking collection, Pioneers Of African American Cinema, and to call it one of the year’s best home video releases is to truly understate the sociological import carried within this release.

Silent era and early-talkie cinema, as seen by many a film aficionado, is a deeply problematic world. Primarily helmed by white men, films more than occasionally featured everything from frustratingly cartoonish caricatures of African-American characters (furthering stereotypes like the “Mamie”) to white actors donning black face (of which there is also a great deal within this set as well) in what is seen today as a disturbing bit of racism.