Tyler Texas Black Film Collection (1985)
*** (out of 4)
Ossie Davis hosts and narrates this fascinating documentary that takes a look at the important discovery of G. William Jones of SMU. Back in the 80's he discovered a prints of several race pictures from the 1930s. These included BOOGIE WOOGIE BLUES, JUKE JOINT, MIDNIGHT SHADOW, MURDER IN HARLEM and several others. Davis talks about the discovery and why these movies are so important to the anti-Hollywood portion of this era. This here was original shown as an introduction to a film on television and for the most part this did a great job at explaining why the discovery was so important. I'm really not sure if it managed to build up much interest in the race films of this era but this is a nice document of the collection.