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Jacksonville’s contribution to black filmmaking celebrated in New York
The Norman Studios Silent Film Museum, Inc. screened “The Flying Ace,” a silent film produced by late Jacksonville filmmaker Richard E. Norman at the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater in New York on Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 6:30 p.m. The screening was part of a film series and related conference presented by Columbia University School of the Arts and the Film Society of Lincoln Center titled “Faded Glory: Oscar Micheaux and Black Pre-War Cinema.”
Along with Micheaux, Norman was among the first to produce films starring African-American actors in positive roles. Between 1920 and 1928, Norman’s company, the Norman Film Manufacturing Co., produced six feature-length films as part of a movement to establish an independent black cinema at a time when blacks were stereotyped and demeaned in mainstream movies. Norman’s grandson, Richard E. Norman, III, will introduce the film. The NSSFM Board of Directors is providing literature for the events and members will also attend the screening to provide information about the restoration of the Norman Studios.
“To be asked to screen Richard Norman’s ‘The Flying Ace’ at the Lincoln Center is indeed an honor,” says NSSFM Board of Advisors member Sandra Birnhak. “I cannot think of a more prestigious venue to expose this little known film from the Norman studios. It has always been my hope that Jacksonville, as the original home of the film industry, will take an active role in preserving the Norman Studios before it is too late.”
“In the history of race movies, Richard Norman is BIG,” says Columbia University Professor of Film Jane Gaines, who helped develop the film series. “Try to imagine why a white entrepreneur would make films to be shown in segregated theatres to all-black audiences in the late 1910s. The Norman Company films, especially ‘The Flying Ace’ and ‘The Green-Eyed Monster’ were extremely popular in their day. We wanted to show ‘The Flying Ace’ again in New York because it is the only Norman film that survives and it is still a crowd-pleaser.”
New York media outlets already are praising the series. “Micheaux and his peers created a vital body of work out of technical limitations and social restrictions. If you haven’t seen these early examples of black filmmaking, you need to get down to Lincoln Center stat,” writes Time Out New York.
“Whether chronicling the sacred or the profane, the films in ‘Faded Glory’ abound with show-stopping numbers… Walter Reade’s invaluable series boasts other indelible performers whose careers tragically stalled or faded away due to the intractable racism in the movie business,” adds Artforum.com
“The Flying Ace” is Norman’s only known surviving feature length film and is housed at the Library of Congress. A surviving portion of Norman’s “The Bull-Dogger” also was scheduled to be shown Feb. 14 and 17 along with Spencer Williams’ “Go Down Death,” based on a poem by another famous Jacksonville son, James Weldon Johnson. Pending a formal agreement with the City of Jacksonville, the museum and related programs will be housed within Norman’s original five-building studio complex still standing in the city’s Old Arlington neighborhood. According to preservationists, it is the nation’s only surviving full silent film studio complex.
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