Documentary Filmmaker, William Miles, Dies at 82

William Miles, also known as Bill, lived a life devoted to exploring and documenting the history, culture, and achievements of African Americans. On May 12, at the age of 82, Miles died in Queens, reported the New York Times. Although stricken with a number of health problems, the cause of his death is unknown. Born on April 18^th 1931 and raised in Harlem on West 126^th street, Miles lived behind and worked at the famous Apollo Theatre.  Among his many awards was his induction into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1986. He leaves behind his wife of 61 years, Gloria Miles, daughters Brenda Moore and Deborah Jones, and three grandchildren.

William Miles (photo: Don Purdue)

The New York Times recently reported:

“Mr. Miles was part historical sleuth, part preservationist, part bard. His films, which combined archival footage, still photographs and fresh interviews, were triumphs of curiosity and persistence in unearthing lost material about forgotten subjects.”

Many of Miles’s films concentrated on documenting African Americans’ contributions to the military. Miles’s film Men of Bronze (1977), also known as the Harlem Hellfighters and the Black Rattlers, has been noted as one of his most important films. The film had its debut at the New York Film Festival and later aired on national public television. Men of Bronze, which is a combination of photos, footage, memoirs, and anecdotes, captures the emotional journey of the all-black 369^th Infantry Regiment and the story of how they fought under the French flag due to segregationist policies during the First World War. Authors Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler stated in their book Struggles For Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video, “Men of Bronze (1997) became a model for documentaries that put African Americans back into military history.”

The Black Film Center/Archive holds copies of several of Miles’s films, including 16mm prints of his series, I Remember Harlem.  Other Miles material at BFC/A includes an interview conducted by BFC/A founder Phyllis Klotman and a collection of Miles’s research materials, donated in August 1997, relating to the 1992 documentary film Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II.  Co-produced and directed by Nina Rosenblum, this ninety-minute film documented the stories of black army units fighting against racism in the military and at home. The film was nominated in the 1993 Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature.  A finding aid is available online here.

In 2006, William Miles placed a major collection of his work with the Washington University Film and Media Archive in St. Louis. 

Miles was a recipient of many awards throughout his career and was a member of several distinguished organizations. Some of his awards and affiliations include: the Black Harlem Award, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, the International Documentary Association, and the Black National Programming Consortium.

William Miles’s work will continued to be treasured for years to come, as his documentaries provide insight on the history of many aspects of African American life across an array of professions and communities.

~Katrina Overby

Starts Tonight: The Shared Ethnography of Jean Rouch @ the IU Cinema

Influential French documentarian Jean Rouch is the focus of a retrospective at the IU Cinema this month.  The series opens tonight at 6:30 pm with a double header of Les Maîtres Fous and Moi, un Noir.

Rouch’s 1967 classic Jaguar will screen on Saturday, February 9 at 6:30 pm.  Mammy Water and The Lion Hunters will close the series on Sunday, February 17 at 6:30 pm.

For more on Jean Rouch, check out African film scholar Manthia Diawara’s 1995 documentary, Rouch in Reverse.  Diawara turns the ethnographic camera on Rouch in an act of “reverse anthropology.”   Trailer HERE.

The Shared Ethnography of Jean Rouch coincides with a nationwide tour following Icarus Films’ acquisition of the North American rights for six of Rouch’s films.  The series is co-sponsored by the BFC/A, the Departments of Communication and Culture, Anthropology, History, French and Italian, the African Studies Program and the IU Cinema.

Pullman Porters on Screen, Part 2 (Since 1960)

As the prominence of American railroads began to decline drastically in the post-war era, and the escalating civil-rights movement diversified workplace opportunities for African Americans, the ubiquity of the Pullman Porter also began to fall.  In film, the ‘Pullman-Porter-as-black-archetype-for-white-audiences’ lost currency, and the figure of the Pullman Porter relocated to a very different branch of the film universe: documentaries and narrative features concerned with historical memory.

California Newsreel led the documentary charge, with Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle (1982) directed by Paul Wagner, and A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom (1996) directed by Dante James. Miles of Smiles chronicled the organizing of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, while For Jobs and Freedom, more broadly, focused on the wide ranging career of A. Philip Randolph.   Both documentaries were made for TV, and are currently available from California Newsreel.  [Note: BFC/A will be screening A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom on February 6, 2013.  More on that here.] In 2006, a third major documentary, Rising from the Rails (2006), directed by Brad Osborne and based on Larry Tye’s book, was released. Below, a clip from Miles of Smiles:

The first narrative feature on Pullman Porters, 10,000 Black Men Named George, came out in 2002, directed by Robert Townsend and starring Andre Braugher, Charles S. Dutton, and Mario Van Peebles. The film’s title comes from the antebellum practice of calling male slaves by their masters’ name, a racist gesture which carried into the Pullman era (George Pullman founded the Pullman Rail Company), similar to calling someone ‘boy.’  That particular part of the experience is depicted in this scene from the movie (and here’s another interesting clip):

While Townsend’s effort seems to be the only feature film which made it out of production, there were reports of Stanley Robertson, Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, and Bill Cosby working with 20^th Century Fox to produce a biopic on A. Philip Randolph and his wife, Lucille, in 2001; it’s unclear whether or not this project is still in the works, though Roberstson (who also produced Men of Honor) has passed away.

While we can appreciate the efforts made to portray Pullman porters and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, it’s hard to not feel like there is an under-representation of their experience in film, given their incredible and untold contributions to American life.  And yet, perhaps because of the influence of these films (and a slew of wonderful researchers and museums), efforts at telling the stories of Pullman porters may be on the increase.  In 2009, Amtrak launched a program to commemorate the contributions of Pullman porters.  And last year, playwright Cheryl L West’s Pullman Porter Blues took the Arena Stage – here’s a writeup from NPR.  Perhaps a sleeping car porter blockbuster is next?

Cleavant Derricks (L), as Sylvester in Pullman Porter Blues.

~ Jonathan Donald Jenner

*****

Read “Pullman Porters on Screen, Part 1 (pre-1960)” here.

Pullman Porters on Screen, Part 1 (Pre-1960)

The legacy of Pullman porters and the labor union eventually formed by them  – the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters – is an important one in American and labor history. Correspondingly, Pullman porters have left their imprint on American film in many different ways through the years, though the volume and type of those depictions might be wanting.

Pullman porter Harry Lucas (Margaret Bourke-White/Time and Life)

When George Pullman ventured in to the business of sleeping class accommodation on the railroads after the Civil War, he made a decision to hire only black porters – attendants for all aspects of the sleeping car experience – owing to several factors: a large, newly available labor pool willing to work; the ability to pay lower wages to black men; and to recreate – for the white middle classes who would ride the train – the upper class experience of being waited on by paid servants.  Working conditions were long, tough, and underpaid, and yet it was an available job for black men systematically excluded from much of the labor force, which meant something.  In 1925, under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was formed and, and conditions and pay for the profession began to improve.  The Pullman porters, aided by the BSCP, have been seen as contributors to the black middle class that grew between the 1920s and 1960s in America (excuse my brevity – you can read more in many places, including here, here, here, and here).

The first black film company – the Foster Photoplay Company – was formed in 1909 and put out two shorts The Pullman Porter (1910), and The Railroad Porter (1912), which are often credited as the first films directed by a black director with an entirely black cast.  The slapstick films were generally considered to posit African Americans positively and not in the racist archetypes of the day (these films came out a few years before D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation), and featured Pullman porters in both.  The latter film is also credited with having the first chase scene in film history.

Pullman porters made it into the peripheries of many other films in the silent era, all too often, unfortunately, against a reductive and racist backdrop.  For example, Fast Black (1924), features two white characters, one of whom has his face accidentally blackened by a car’s exhaust pipe, and responds to an ad for a ‘colored Pullman porter.’  According to IMDb, the rest of the film is driven by “mistaken identity due to accidental blackface.”  Unfortunately, many of these films have now been lost – we know, very little, for example, about Roscoe Arbuckle’s 1919 ‘The Pullman Porter’ except that it starred white actors.  Al Jolson, whose relationship to African Americans and race in America was much more complex than initial appearances, used Pullman porter tropes and archetypes in his 1913 album and song Pullman Porter’s Parade, promoting the song with blackface material.

Al Jolson’s promotional photo for Pullman Porter’s Parade

In the Talkies era, the ubiquity of the Pullman porter in American life is perhaps most visible through scanning over the filmography of Dudley Dickerson.   Dickerson, who appeared in around films beginning in 1932, played a Pullman porter (or some type of role on a train) in the following titles:  The Alligator People (1959), The Opposite Sex (1956), Tonight We Sing (1953), Everybody Does It (1949), It’s a Great Feeling (1949), The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949), It Had to Be You (1947), Hold That Lion (1947), I’ll Be Yours (1947), Rolling Down to Reno (1947), The Falcons Adventure (1946), One Way to Love (1946), The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945), A Guy, a Gal, and a Pal (1945), Together Again (1944), His Wedding Scare (1943),  George Washington Slept Here (1942), Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942), Spy Smasher (1942), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), All-American Co-ed (1941), Knute Rockne All American (1940), On Trial (1939), The Sisters (1938), Broadway Musketeers (1938), The Adventurous Blonde (1937), Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936), and Polo Joe  (1936). A scan of Dickerson’s filmography (here) has him cast in a vast array of servile roles as a minor or supporting actor, and he is often not credited. Below is Dickerson in Hold That Lion (1947), a short with the Three Stooges franchise (Dickerson’s spot begins at 4:05).

However, not all films featuring Pullman porters were consigned to base and stereotypical motifs at the peripheries of films.  For example, Eugene O’Neill’s 1920 play The Emperor Jones was adapted twice – in a 1933 screen version directed by Dudley Murphey (starring Paul Robeson), and a 1955 made-for-TV film produced by Kraft Television Theatre (starring Ossie Davis).  The Emperor Jones tells the story of a Pullman Porter who eventually becomes the emperor or a Carribbean island.  The story is certainly not without its criticism – frequent use of the word ‘nigger’ and plays on sexual myths about black men among them – though it certainly cuts against the grain of films featuring Pullman porters at the time.

Still, the imprint of Pullman porters on American film is more than just depictions of Pullman porters on screen.  Oscar Micheaux was a Pullman porter before becoming one of the most successful black directors in the silent and talkie era.  As a porter, Micheaux was able to travel across and see the country, establish relationships with wealthy people who would later finance his films, and learned how to manage business operations.  We’re quite thankful it helped launch his career in film, and the Lincoln Motion Picture Company.

~Jonathan Jenner

AMIA 2012: Trip Report

As Assistant Archivist at the BFC/A, I recently had an opportunity to attend the annual conference of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) in Seattle. It was immensely informative (and more than a bit exciting), giving me a chance to see what work is being done in the preservation and restoration of film materials around the world—not just within dedicated film archives, but in all repositories that house these materials and have to deal with the issues that then arise.

Since many of these issues are ones that we deal with here at the BFC/A (such as identification, storage, and handling), it was nice to see that they are universal and to have a chance to get outside perspectives on them. On a personal level it was good for me, as a fairly new member of the community, to really get a sense of what that community is about and the connections that exist. It was an overview of what areas in film are still in need of attention and resources–a look at the bigger picture that can be adapted to suit the needs of the BFC/A. The amount of new information, ideas, and methods was a bit overwhelming at first—and before the end of the first day I had resolved to take in as much as I could and not get lost in the details—but by the end of the conference I felt I had come away with a general idea of where to go from here.

The issue that stuck with me the most was the need to preserve non-commercial films, including home movies. There have been strides made to draw attention to these films—and Indiana University does participate in the annual Home Movie Day—but most of the attention when it comes to issues of preservation and restoration is given to commercial film.  That remains an important and vital section of film history, certainly, but equal attention should probably be given to these amateur productions. They provide us with a living document of our past, a candid look at our history, and ensuring that these items are kept in a condition where they can be continually screened should be at the forefront of every archive that deals with film materials.

Trailer for the 10th Annual Home Movie Day, 2012

This was the topic of the first session I attended, “A Decade of Home Movie Day,” and the issue stretched throughout the remainder of the week. I have to admit that going into the conference I had never put much thought behind the challenges of such films, having spent most of my time at the BFC/A working with commercial film that usually has a large amount of metadata. I understood that preserving amateur film was important, but the issues of how to process, preserve, and screen these films had never really been laid out in such a way before. Needless to say, I returned from Seattle eager to see this work continued and expanded upon here at Indiana University and the BFC/A, and to see Home Movie Day continue to grow.

Of course, the conference encompassed other issues and I returned with a broader understanding of the field in general, and the work that is needed to continue to make the films held in archives accessible to the general public. And it does seem to be a continual effort: the conference started with an examination of the film-related clean-up efforts undertaken in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Additionally, AMIA2012 was a great opportunity to see the fruits of some of this preservation and restoration work, as a variety of these films were presented at the Archival Screening Night.

So—a bit of a whirlwind overview into the world of film archives. But nevertheless, I came back to Bloomington with a new way of looking at the challenges we face, a better understanding of the variety of material being collected, and a better knowledge of the newer developments in film preservation. But most of all, I returned with stronger than ever conviction that, in preserving film, we are preserving our shared history.

~Stacey Doyle

To See & Hear History: The SF State Strike Collection at the SF Bay Area Television Archive

Student-made pamphlet for SF State Student Strike.

Friday, December 14th, 2012, marks the 44th anniversary of classes being suspended at San Francisco State University, amidst a strike led by the Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front, demanding the establishment of various Ethnic Studies departments and an end to the Vietnam War.  In 2008, San Francisco State University celebrated the 40th anniversary of the strike – the longest campus strike in U.S. history – by looking back on how the event “defined the University’s core values of equity and social justice, laid the groundwork for establishment of the College of Ethnic Studies, and inspired the establishment of ethnic studies classes and programs at other universities throughout the country.”

Now, thanks to the efforts of the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, much of the audiovisual record that documents the strike is available online, in the SF State Strike Collection.

I spoke to Alex Cherian, SFSU’s resident film archivist, who had this to say about the significance of the collection:

From the point of view of San Francisco State University, it’s one thing to be told about the riots, but it’s another thing entirely to see the campus – the same trees and buildings and students who are the same age as students now – being attacked by police.  The incident is referred to as a ‘riot,’ but what it was, really, was students being beat up by police for what they believed in.  They were there as part of the struggle to establish ethnic studies, and still today, [SFSU] has a very vibrant and active College of Ethnic Studies.  It’s something very special to see and hear how the College [of Ethnic Studies] was born, and to feel that history.

Police and Students Clashing in a screenshot from On Strike! (At SF State)

In addition to raw footage of newscasts from the time, the archive includes On Strike! (At SF State), a 1969 documentary by Saul Rouda and David Dobkin on the strikes. (You can purchase the DVD from California Newsreel here.)

The collection also highlights how the strike extended beyond the student body.  In one clip (here), Dr. Carlton Goodlett (a man, who, among other things, opened a family medical practice in San Francisco, published the weekly Sun Reporter newspaper which agitated for civil rights, and “became the first black American since Reconstruction to mount a serious candidacy for the governorship of California”) holds a press conference “to explain how local community and labor forces are mobilizing in unison to support student protests at SF State College, in anticipation of a protracted struggle to restructure California’s Higher Education system.”

Dr. Carlton Goodlett speaks to the press.

Even amidst the global upheaval of 1968 – from Paris and Prague to Chicago and Los Angeles – the student strike at San Francisco State University looms large.  Its significance–both in establishing Ethnic Studies as a respected academic discipline and in mounting a multi-racial, multi-ethnic response to institutional racism–cannot be overstated, and underscores the necessity of preserving the audiovisual record of the strike.

The San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive got its start in 1982, when local news stations were switching film formats, and looking to offload their stored materials.  The materials found their way into the SFSU library, where the film was processed and catalogued thematically.  In 2010, the archive began to digitize and publish the collections online.

“There are thousands of hours of newsreel in the collection,” said Cherian, “and we’re still turning up interesting pieces.”  In addition to the SF State Strike collection, the archive maintains several collections of related interest, including the César Chávez Collection, the Black Panthers Collection, the Japanese American Collection, and the Occupation of Alcatraz Collection, among others.

~ Jonathan Jenner

25th New York Queer Experimental Film Festival

Founded in the 1980s, Mix NYC, a non-profit organization based in New York City, New York, has dedicated its existence to the promotion of previously marginalized works from gay, lesbian, transgender and queer artists in the field of cinematography. November 13th, 2012 marked the 25th anniversary of Mix NYC’s continued commitment to, and celebration of, film with the start of the 25th New York Queer Experimental Film Festival. For 6 days, extending from November 13th through November 18th, 2012, over 120 films with run times from 2 minutes to 64 minutes will captivate New York audiences.

Erzulie’s Tears, Photo Courtesy of MixNYC.org

On Wednesday November 14, 2012 Mix NYC presented Exploding Lineage! a collection of 14 short films rooted in and inspired by the Harlem Renaissance. BullDagger Women and Sissy Men, produced by KB Boyce, captures in 6 minutes the role of queers in the Harlem Renaissance movement while MA Brooks film Erzulie’s Tears takes a poetic look at the spirit of a Haitian Voudoun goddess of love. Other films, like Renaissance Redux by Oriana Bolden, function as documentaries, focusing on the history, thoughts, and stories of individuals, queer and straight, growing up in Harlem and during the Harlem Renaissance.

O Happy Day, Photo Courtesy of MixNYC.org

On Thursday, November 15, Mix NYC presented a retrospective look at past film screenings, spanning the first 13 years of Mix NYC Film Festival. A notable inclusion was the showing of O Happy Day (Charles Lofton).  By splicing together footage from Black Panther gatherings, gay black porn, and other early footage from the 1970s, Lofton re-contextualizes the Black Power movement as the beginnings of a gay uprising and awakening.

Mommy is Coming, Photo Courtesy of MixNYC.org

To end the festival of films, Mix NYC will host the New York premiere of Mommy is Coming on Sunday November 18th at 3:00PM. The director, Cheryl Dunye, will be present during the screening. Described as a “comedic pornographic exploration of love” on Mix NYC’s website, Cheryl Dunye’s latest work attempts to explore the identity issues complicit in the navigation of sexually and racially bound relationships. The film follows Claudia, the main character of the film, as she attempts to fulfill her girlfriends wishes by adopting a more strongly male persona, Claude.

With three nights of films galore in the days ahead, residents of New York City and incoming visitors still have plenty of time to catch screenings of Cheryl Dunye Mommy is Coming along with the vast array of other films investigating queer, racial, and sexual topics of discussion. This is not to mention the installations and live performances hosted at the Mix Factory for the 25th New York Queer Experimental Film Festival.

~Ardea Smith

To Save and Project: ‘Rufus Jones for President’ screens this weekend at MoMA

Rufus Jones for President, a 1933 Warner Brothers short, screens this weekend at To Save and Project, the 10th International Festival of Preservation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.  Presented in an archival print from the collections of the Black Film Center/Archive, Roy Mack’s Rufus will be paired with Gregory La Cava’s Gabriel Over the White House (also from 1933) for an election-themed double bill running Saturday, October 27th, at 5:00 pm (with the American release version of Gabriel) and again on Sunday, October 28^th, at 3:45 pm (with Gabriel‘s British release version).  Both screenings are in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater.   From the MoMA program notes:

Americans had the presidency much on their mind in 1933. Early in the New Deal, Vitaphone put out this jovially offensive fantasy in which Ethel Waters dreams that her very talented son (seven-year-old Sammy Davis, Jr.) is elected president of the United States.

Davis, Jr., with sammie

Rufus Jones for President stars the celebrated vocalist and actress Ethel Waters and–in his first on-screen appearance–Sammy Davis, Jr., both of whom have brought the film an amount of fame.  Their performances and those of the supporting cast have generally received positive critical notice.

Beyond the actors and their performances, discussion of the film has focused on the presence of many stereotypical motifs in the two-reeler: watermelons, chicken, craps.  Some such critiques, however, have been framed as readings of the intent and agency of the performers rather than outright denunciations of the short film as ‘racist.’

For those of you who won’t be in New York this weekend, the video is available online:

Challenging the Authenticity/Minstrelsy Lens: Jacqueline Stewart on Spencer Williams

Spencer Williams’ The Blood of Jesus

On Friday, October 26^th, at 4 PM, visiting scholar Jacqueline Stewart will present the 2012 James Naremore Lecture at IU Cinema, “The Films of Spencer Williams:  A Comic History of Race Movies.” Stewart, an Associate Professor of Radio/Film/Television and African American Studies at Northwestern University, and author of the award-winning Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity, will survey the filmmaking career of  Spencer Williams (1893-1969) and discuss the integral role and social impact of comedy in these early Black-cast films.  The comic elements of race movies, ranging in approach from parody to slapstick and stand-up, have been overlooked by scholars, among whom a greater focus has been placed on the Black-cast melodrama and its response to racial stereotyping.  From the event description:

Challenging oversimplified equations of Black humor with either racial authenticity or exploitative minstrelsy, the talk suggests that when we chart the numerous comic elements across Williams’ work, we gain a more nuanced perspective on how Black media artists engaged diverse audiences during the era of Jim Crow segregation.  We also expand our understanding of Black media authorship beyond the role of the director to consider the functions of writing, onscreen performance, and collaborators from both sides of the color line.

Stewart will also appear at IU Cinema at 7 PM on Thursday, October 25^th—the evening before her Naremore Lecture—to introduce and discuss Williams’ 1941 film, The Blood of Jesus, screening here in a restored print courtesy of the G. William Jones Film & Video Collection, Hamon Arts Library, Southern Methodist University.  Williams wrote, directed, and starred in the film, which paved the way for him to make several more features through the 40s, before gaining wider exposure as Andy of Amos ‘n Andy in the television adaption of Freeman Godsen and Charles Corell’s eponymous radio show.

Thanks to the sponsorship of Indiana University’s Department of Communication and Culture and additional support from IU Cinema and BFC/A, these events are free and open to the public.

Jacqueline Stewart

Home Movie Day 2012 at Indiana University

Home Movie Day is back at Indiana University, and it’s going to be great.  On Saturday, October 20^th, starting at 3pm, the IU Cinema will screen home movies that members of the public bring in.  The event, which supports films in 8mm, Super8, 16mm, VHS or DVD formats, will include discussion with home movie owners, the viewing public, and trained specialists (for those who plan to bring in home movies, the doors open at 2pm to talk with the film specialists about your prints).

Image from “Menzies Family Christmas,” 1967, New York City, New York. Source: Alfred M. Menzies.
From the DVD Living Room Cinema: Films from Home Movie Day, Vol. 1.

Home Movie Day began in 2003 as the brainchild of archivists at the Center for Home Movies to promote the showing and preservation of home movies; today, Home Movie Day is celebrated at over 100 venues in 17 countries across 5 continents.  If you’re not one of the lucky ones in Indiana this weekend, here’s a list of other venues for Home Movie Day.  And below, a trailer for this year’s event.

We’ve written before about Home Movie Day and home movies made by and featuring African-Americans, such as the films made by Ernest Beane and the Solomon Sir Jones Collection (some of which will be shown at IU’s event this year, courtesy of Yale University).

Of particular interest this year will be a contribution from our guest, Kelli Shay Hix, Curator of Moving Images at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. Kelli will be presenting the big-screen premiere of CMHFM’s recent preservation of home movies from WLAC Nashville radio staff in the studio in 1949.  The film captures this prominent Nashville station at a moment when their programming began its shift from country-style fare towards a focus on emerging black rhythm and blues artists in the 1950s.  Kelli writes of their early broadcasts in this format:

The shows were soon a hit, not only with African-American listeners, and not only with adult audiences, but with teenagers and adults from many backgrounds…Through the medium of radio, it was nearly impossible to guess the race of the DJs (none were African-American), which may have aided in the shows’ crossing of racial lines and generational lines, and which brought a new and controversial music to communities it had never gone before…These late night broadcasts are credited with jump-starting the careers of Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, James Brow, and Little Richard, and for helping to sow the seeds of the fusion that would become rock and roll.

Until Saturday, we’ll leave you with another trailer–this one for Día del cine casero from La Cineteca Nacional de México: