在这部门内剧情/爱情片中,Within Our Gates is a 1920 silent race film that dramatically depicts the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro." The story focuses on an African-American woman who goes North in an effort to help a minister in the Deep South raise money to keep a school open for poor Black children. Her romance with a black doctor eventually leads to revelations about her family's past that expose the racial skeletons in America's closet, most famously through the film's depiction of the injustice of lynching. Produced, written and directed by novelist Oscar Micheaux, it is the oldest known surviving film made by an African-American director. The film, which was written and directed by Micheaux, stars Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, James D. Ruffin, Jack Chenault, William Smith and Charles D. Lucas.
Not seen for seventy-five years, a single print of the film, entitled La Negra was found in Spain. A brief sequence in the middle of the film was lost. Only four of the original titles survived, the rest having been removed for translation. In 1993, the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center restored the film as close to the original as possible. The Spanish titles were retranslated into English by Gene DeAnna. He removed explanatory material which had been added and reproduced the style which Micheaux used in his books. The missing sequence was summarized with an intertitle frame.
Southern negro Sylvia Landry visits her cousin Alma in the north, where there is less racial prejudice than in her home town of Piney Woods in the deep south, and is anxiously awaiting her fiancé, Conrad. But Alma has designs on Conrad and tricks Sylvia into a compromising situation when he arrives, and he abandons her. Disheartened, she returns to Piney Woods to help a reverend running a school for young negroes. Sylvia learns that the reverend hasn't the heart to turn away poor students, and unless he can raise $5,000 to supplement the $1.49 per child per year that the state supplies, the school will be closed. She goes up north again to try to raise the money and has little success, but meets kindly negro, Dr. V. Vivian, who helps her regain her stolen purse. When she saves a child from being hit by an auto, she herself is slightly injured. But the owner of the car is philanthropist Mrs. Elena Warwick, who is sympathetic to her quest and promises to donate the $5,000 to the school. Her bigoted southern friend, Mrs. Stratton, tries to talk her out of the donation, and Mrs. Warwick gets so incensed she raises the amount to $50,000. Her job done, Sylvia returns to Piney Woods. But Dr. Vivian has fallen in love with Sylvia and goes to Alma to try to find her. There he learns the shocking details of her past and that of her family.
