[MUSIC PLAYING]
ASHLEY SWINNERTON: Hi, I'm Ashley Swinnerton,
Collection Specialist in the Department of Film
at the Museum of Modern Art.
We have a very special guest today, the Celeste Bartos Chief
Curator of Film at MoMA, Rajendra Roy.
He's going to talk a little bit about a special film
from our collection, Lime Kiln Club Field Day.
Thanks for joining us, Raj.
RAJENDRA ROY: It's a real pleasure, Ashley.
Thank you so much for organizing this amazing summer series.
ASHLEY: So Lime Kiln Club Field Day
was produced between 1913 and 1914,
and rediscovered a hundred years later by archivists here
at the museum.
Why do you think this film is so important, Raj?
RAJENDRA: Well, the film is a very rare document
of this amazing troupe of actors that
was working in Harlem, and in New York, led by Bert Williams.
It's an all African-American cast.
Bert Williams himself was Caribbean-American,
but obviously a very complicated figure, in the fact
that he wore blackface through most of his career.
This was an accommodation of white audiences, who,
in many cases, would not accept a Black star on screen
or stage.
But by his accommodation of that racist requirement,
the rest of the cast was able to perform without racist makeup.
So it is both a document of the racist traditions
in the entertainment industry and an amazing and vital
portrait of a Black middle-class that has basically been
erased from our cinema history.
ASHLEY: Lime Kiln is one of the most popular films
in our collection, since its rediscovery in 2014.
What is the result of that access?
RAJENDRA: Well, one of the wonderful things is this film
has been reclaimed and interrogated and repurposed
by several African-American artists,
including Garrett Bradley and Oscar nominee, RaMell Ross.
Also, an amazing amount of scholarship and journalism
has resulted from this rediscovery.
To learn more, I invite everyone to visit moma.org,
and I just want to thank everyone for watching.