History of Black Cinema, CH. 1

One of the most meaningful things I found in Mark Reid's chapter 1 was that despite the inequalities of the era, Oscar Micheaux and The Micheaux Film Corporation weren't afraid to confront controversial subject matter of the times such as racial lynching or criminal acts (page 8). They looked controversy in the eye and stood their ground.  If they decided to play it safe and tell stories that weren't evocative and true, progression of films would've been much slower. It was this kind of ambition that led to later evolutions of Black cinema where Hollywood genre mixes with social context. Without such brave ideas, we might not have a lot of entertaining films as well as great filmmakers like Spike Lee, Julie Dash, or Gordon Parks.