Oscar Micheaux' "Body and Soul", 1925

The legendary actor, lawyer, football star and civil right activist Paul Robeson plays a dual role as an evil minister and a noble inventor in this early 1920s silent film by director Oscar Micheaux, the Father of American Independent Cinema. Don't get me wrong, I love John Cassavetes but if we're going to call anyone the Father of American Independent Cinema, Oscar Micheaux gets my vote.
Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951) had written 7 novels before becoming a filmmaker, the first of which he adapted into his first film, The Homesteader, which received widespread critical acclaim. He directed and produced about 40 films from 1919-1948, both silents and talkies, many of which bluntly and sometimes controversially addressed issues of race in America.
I discovered Micheaux through my obsession with Paul Robeson. If you'd like to read my Time Out New York magazine article I wrote about him some 700 years ago you can find it here--
www.brain-on-fire.com/jefesho...
Here's an awesome, well-known documentary about Robeson that I got from Amazon years ago:
robeson documentary amzn.to/4bL4oe2
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