Narrative Style in Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates

Abstract

Within Our Gates is the title of Oscar Micheaux’s rediscovered 1919 feature film. Restored in 1993 from a single known surviving print from Spain, the film adds new insight into the workings of Oscar Micheaux, an incredibly prolific African American filmmaker, writer, producer, novelist, and businessman. Since so few of Micheaux’s estimated forty-eight feature films survive, it is difficult to generalize about the entire oeuvre. However, Within Our Gates is a stunning film, the first surviving feature by an African American director, and an example of his silent-era work. I wish to concentrate exclusively on Within Our Gates not as a fragment from an elusive career, but as a complex, self-sufficient text that stands alone.