Within Our Gates
(Within Our Gates)

Sylvia Landry, a black teacher from the South, goes North to visit a cousin and wait for the man she is going to marry. In this film, Oscar Micheaux is fond of structures with many drawers, crosscutting and abrupt flash-backs. In the geographical toing and froing of Within Our Gates, the impasses –white and black alike – are captured at different levels. The « gates » of the title denote the infinite prison of black adversity, with the astounding opening title card describing this imprisonment : « At the opening of our drama, we find our characters in the North, where the prejudices and hatreds of the South do not exist – though this does not prevent the occasional lynching of a Negro. » Melodrama is as tireless a devil as racial oppression, and Micheaux exacerbated both through his broken forms. Cyril Béghin