The story is as familiar as Hollywood: a classical musician whose
career has been thwarted by injury channels his frustrated desires into
his son’s career, but his son would rather play swing music. But the
cast is all black, and the film was made for the Jim Crow-era network of
independent theaters for black patrons in the south and in larger
northern cities. Clarence Muse, a gifted writer, actor, and composer who
held a degree in international law, played legions of porters and
servants in Hollywood films, but the “race films” of this era gave him
an occasional chance to shine. Broken Strings is probably the high point of his career, a family drama that the Pittsburgh Courier, one
of the most influential black newspapers of the era, praised for
presenting black characters as businessmen and upstanding citizens
instead of violence-depraved criminals.
Broken Strings (1940, 62 min., 16mm print courtesy of Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD)
Sunday, February 24 at 3pm
Black Cinema House
6901 S. Dorchester Ave.
Please RSVP at blackcinemahouse@rebuild-foundation.org
Film scholar Sergio Mims, programmer of Chicago’s Black Harvest Film Festival and writer of Indiewire’s Shadow and Act
blog, will introduce the film and then lead an informal discussion of
it. Seating is limited, so we ask that you RSVP to guarantee a seat.
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