Religion in Early African-America Cinema (2016)
*** (out of 4)
Entertaining featurette that can be found on Kino's Pioneers in African-American Cinema and features interviews with film historians Jacqueline Najuma Stewart and Charles Musser who talk about the importance of religion in early race films. Stewart gets the majority of the six-minute running time as she talks about why religion was put in these movies and how the majority of the people watching them were religious. There's also some nice discussion on where Hollywood went wrong in regards to black people and religion and how the films of Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams were so different. Musser also shares some good stories about how well these films played down South. Fans of this collection of films will certainly enjoy this featurette as there's plenty of good information on hand.