750 word minimum
Use proper citation (see writing guides)
Instructions:
Please watch Oscar Micheaux’s film Within Our Gates (1920) (Links to an external site.), the oldest surviving film by an African American director and read Jane Gaines’s essay on the film.
In many ways, Within Our Gates serves as a response to Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915). Please summarize what you learn about Micheaux, his film, its history and importance from Gaines’s article. Watch Within Our Gates (Links to an external site.) and select a scene from it to analyze. Find a scene in which Micheaux uses cross-cutting as we saw in Birth of a Nation (and which we read about in Fabe’s chapter on Grifith). Explain the intellectual, narrative and emotional effects of Micheaux’s cross cutting in the scene. How does cross cutting help Micheaux produce make a point in his storytelling?
