In Black And White

Directed by Russ Karel

Until the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s, black and white audiences in America had to use separate movie theatres. In 1916 a new industry had begun with the first "all coloured" film, made as a protest against D W Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Director Russ Karel 's documentary charts the development of the independent African-American cinema movement through the eyes of the segregated audiences and tells of the fate of those opposing that dehumanising social order, including Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker , during the McCarthy era.