The chapter I chose to read, “Richard D. Maurice and the Maurice Film Company”, from the book Oscar Micheaux and his Circle<\/u>, details the race films that Richard Maurice produced during the 1920s.<\/p>\n
This chapter is brief in its description of Richard Maurice. He lived in Detroit in a black neighborhood called Paradise Island. However, little evidence remains of this once thriving community and there is little record of Maurice other than his two feature films. Efforts are underway to find out more information about Maurice and the Paradise Island community in general.<\/p>\n
The main focus of the chapter is describing the two feature films that Maurice (and the Maurice Film Company) made. There were a lot of promotional materials made for Richard Maurice’s first film, “Nobody’s Children”, including productions stills and brief summaries of the plot. The film centers around two illegitimate children, a boy accused of murder and a girl who is abducted by her step-father. As the boy promised to protect his sister, he escapes from jail and tries to save her. This film was met with wide acceptance and good reviews. It was shown all over the east coast and people viewed Maurice as a very capable director. “Nobody’s Children” was released in 1920, a time that experienced a burst in race film in general, with Oscar Micheaux and others also contributing their productions. The text makes the point that making race film was not easy–particularly economically, which is why many companies that made race films did not last very long. This is evident in Maurice’s choice to forgo making another feature film until 1929\/1930.<\/p>\n
There is far less information available about Maurice’s second film, “Eleven P.M.”. It was not as widely viewed and did not show in any major cities. It is regarded as an “avant-garde” film; the plot focuses mainly on the dream of a writer struggling to finish the final chapter of his manuscript that is due at 11 p.m. The dream is very strange. Maurice used many new techniques, such as a split screen and unique camera angles, as well as novel cinematography, to create a surreal effect. Though there is clearly influence from some of Micheaux’s work in the film, the techniques and overall weird, surreal effect really separate this film specifically from other race films.<\/p>\n
Overall, this chapter gives the reader insight into the broad range of race film during this era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The chapter I chose to read, “Richard D. Maurice and the Maurice Film Company”, from the book Oscar Micheaux and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}