Synopsis
Within Our Gates (1920) is the earliest surviving feature film by an African American director — watch it online on iFILM. Oscar Micheaux shot it in 1920, right in the middle of Jim Crow America, and refused to soften what he saw around him.
Sylvia Landry, an educated Black woman, is left by her fiancé and travels to Boston to raise money for a struggling rural school for Black children. Her mission keeps crossing the path of Larry Prichard, a criminal who once harassed her and hasn't stopped watching. Micheaux put lynching and sexual violence on screen with a directness that no major studio would risk for decades — the film carries that weight even now, over a century later.
Believed lost for most of the twentieth century, a print turned up in a Spanish film archive in the 1970s. Within Our Gates is now preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry. Watch it online on iFILM.
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