Oldest surviving film with black actors discovered

theGRIO REPORT - Museum curators have discovered the remnants of a 1913 movie that has never been seen before. The film is believed to be the oldest surviving footage of African-American actors.

TheGrio Staff

Sep 24, 2014

Museum curators have discovered the remnants of a 1913 movie that has never been seen before. The film is believed to be the oldest surviving footage of African-American actors.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has announced that the footage and the images are going to be shown on October 24, as an element of an exhibit called “100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History,” reports CBS.

Since the movie’s title is not known yet, curators have decided to call it “Bert Williams Lime Kiln Field Day Project.”

Not much is known about the actors yet. Only Williams, who is in the lead role, has been identified. He was born in the Caribbean and was the first Broadway African-American star. A lot of the actors in the movie are themselves forefathers of the Harlem Renaissance. MoMA curators have identified them as being heavy theater African-American actors.

The 40-minute silent movie is filled with racist imagery and expressions. The stereotypes are freely expressed by some of the black actors, including Williams’ performance in blackface.

It appears the movie was made two years before the Klan-cloaked “Birth of a Nation,” and one year before Charlie Chaplin’s first movie.

Williams dealt with discrimination and racism during the hey days of his career. Oftentimes, service at hotels and restaurants across the US refused him service. “It wouldn’t be so bad … if I didn’t hear the applause [from his act] still ringing in my ears,” PBS.org quoted him as saying.

Being sick with pneumonia, among other ailments, Williams collapsed on stage in Detroit, Michigan, in 1922. The audience’s first reaction was of laugher, as they thought his fall was part of the script.

The staff backstage helped him, according to the book Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, and he said, “That’s a nice way to die — they was laughing when I made my last exit.”

Click here to see photos from the exhibit released by CBS.