Watch The Homesteader Free Online

Cast: Evelyn Preer

Categories: Movies, Silent film, Indie, Black-and-white, Early Black Cinema

The Homesteader (1919) is a black-and-white silent film by African American author and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. The film was produced, co-directed and written for the screen by Micheaux, based on his book of the same name. It is believed to be the first feature-length film made with a black cast and crew, for a black audience, and thus the first example of a race movie. Most of the filming, if not all, took place in Winner, South Dakota. Micheaux, using his considerable skills as a businessman and salesman, sold stock in his corporation to the white farmers around Sioux City, Iowa at... MORE

The Homesteader (1919) is a black-and-white silent film by African American author and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. The film was produced, co-directed and written for the screen by Micheaux, based on his book of the same name. It is believed to be the first feature-length film made with a black cast and crew, for a black audience, and thus the first example of a race movie. Most of the filming, if not all, took place in Winner, South Dakota. Micheaux, using his considerable skills as a businessman and salesman, sold stock in his corporation to the white farmers around Sioux City, Iowa at prices ranging from $75 to $100 per share. Eventually enough capital was secured to produce the eight-reel film starring Charles Lucas as the male lead, and Evelyn Preer and Iris Hall, two well-known dramatic actresses who at the time were associated with the Lafayette Players Stock Company. The Homesteader involves six principal characters, the leading one being Jean Baptiste (Charles Lucas), a homesteader far off in the Dakotas, living where he alone is black. To this wilderness arrives Jack Stewart, a Scotsman, with his motherless daughter, Agnes (Iris Hall). In Agnes, Baptiste meets the girl of LESS