A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical.
A simple filmed performance featuring Cantor, done up in his stage minstrel makeup, allegedly at the Ziegfeld Theatre Roof Garden, but actually filmed on a soundstage at the Paramount Astoria studio.
Boisterous teen Judy Bellaire is expelled from her all-female boarding school for convincing her fellow school chorus members to sing a classical piece with a modern swing beat. She returns to her dysfunctional home, dejected, but, with the encouragement of her family's cook, Judy decides to follow her dream and audition for a Broadway musical.
A stop-motion film from Émile Cohl with tin soldiers, children's drawings and cannibals.
Lovely Linda Mason has crooner Jim Hardy head over heels, but suave stepper Ted Hanover wants her for his new dance partner after fickle Lila Dixon gives him the brush. Jim's supper club, Holiday Inn, is the setting for the chase by Hanover and his manager.
A mysterious door in the basement of the Hercules house leads to the Sixth Dimension by way of a gigantic set of intestine. When Frenchy slips through the door, King Fausto falls in love with her. The jealous Queen Doris takes Frenchy prisoner, and it is up to the Hercules family and friend Squeezit Henderson to rescue her.
A group of self-absorbed actors set out to make the most expensive war film ever. After ballooning costs force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they encounter real bad guys.
Struggling stockbroker Jimmie Shannon learns that, if he gets married by 7 p.m. on his 27th birthday -- which is today -- he'll inherit $7 million from an eccentric relative.
A successful songwriter, dazzled by high society, falls for a society girl who is just playing around.
TV producer Pierre Delacroix becomes frustrated when network brass reject his sitcom idea. Hoping to get fired, Delacroix pitches the worst idea he can think of: a 21st century minstrel show. The network not only airs it, but it becomes a smash hit.
The Keystone gang all in blackface for this one-reeler!
After marrying a dour and disinterested lord for status, a young woman falls in love with a stage actor while her best friend from boarding school enters an affair with her husband.
This sprawling, surrealist comedy serves as an allegory for the pitfalls of capitalism, as it follows the adventures of a young coffee salesman in modern Britain.
A small town man takes a mail-order detective course. When a Black friend is murdered, he goes undercover in black-face to investigate at a notorious, knife-wielding bootlegger's roadhouse. Originally a 5-reel feature (50min), now only 2 reel edit exists.
Our Colonial Hangover analyzes the debate surrounding the racist component of the Dutch Black Pete character. Although the debate always heats up around the time of the Saint Nicholas celebrations every December, it reached an unprecedented level of ferocity in 2013.
A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century, and texts by Celedonio Flores and Enrique Santos Discépolo.
The film consists of Bert Swor in black-face pretending to be a black preacher.
Alkali Ike and the Wildman
Unlike anything else you will see in this year or any other, 'The Decline of the West' is a groundbreaking social allegory that challenges its audience to explore the effects of contemporary conditioning; of the stereotypes, and counter-stereotypes surrounding race and ethnicity. By employing a unique blend of absurdist humor and dry, dark comedy, both the insularity and the inertia of progressive society are put on trial and hanged in this bold film that goes places few have ever gone. The film maintains its extended, detailed allegory, in which the physical layout of Manhattan comes to life as its symbols of Progress slowly turn it into a comic liberal dystopia. Anything that "isn't allowed" is used to confront the audience with hypocrisy. Make-up plays a crucial role throughout the film, as a hinge that simultaneously showcases characters and the existential reality of the players behind them.
A series of 19 musical and comedy "vaudeville" sketches presented in the form of a live television broadcast hosted by Tommy Handley (as himself).