00:12Seventy-five percent of all silent films ever made are now lost due to neglect and nitrate
00:18chemical decomposition. It's a staggering loss in artistic tragedy. But this story isn't that
00:24story at all. This silent film wasn't lost but found and screened for the first time 101 years
00:32after it was first shot. And if that isn't unique and amazing enough, this found footage is now
00:38considered the first all-black feature film ever made with the first black superstar entertainer
00:44in American history. His name was Burt Williams and he was born in the Bahamas, then emigrated to
00:50the United States as a child. Despite having to perform in burnt cork blackface, the only way
00:55white audiences would accept a black man on the vaudeville stage, Burt Williams defied racist
01:01standards by demanding his actual image appear alongside his blackface character on merchandised
01:06products. By 1913, Burt Williams signed an unprecedented deal with prestigious Biograph
01:13Studios in New York City for a starring film role with an all-black cast. The plot was simple. His
01:19character vies with two rivals for the heart of a small-town girl. But if the plot was simple,
01:25the footage shot was radical and still recognizable as such today. When she saw it, cinema studies
01:30professor Brianna Brown was stunned. First of all, I didn't even know this film existed. It's
01:36incredible to see something that takes back the narrative, rewrites history, flips every stereotype
01:41on its head. There's even more flipping in the surviving raw footage. Here's William Chappelle,
01:46Burt Williams' valet, applying burnt cork. Code switching in action. He may be in blackface,
01:52but still gets the star treatment. And here he is directing director Edwin Middleton. Traffic cop.
01:58Well, Burt Williams calls the shots. Literally. Let's talk about the most radical moment of all. Most
02:04radical and most romantic. A kiss between the two leads, played not for laughs or mockery, but with
02:12tenderness and affection. Talk about landmark. In 1913. You don't see this in a major studio movie for
02:19another half century at least. You didn't see it in 1913 either. That's the heartbreak that this film
02:26stayed unfinished. Convinced white audiences would shun a story that depicted black experience with dignity and
02:32respect. Biograph shelved the unassembled footage. Not until 90 years later did Ron Magliozzi, curator at
02:39the Museum of Modern Art in New York, begin a crusade to reconstruct the still unidentified reels.
02:45Ron used facial recognition technology to identify long forgotten leading lady Odessa Warren Gray,
02:52matched on-camera fire hydrants with those used only in New Jersey to determine the site of location
02:57shooting and hired a professional lip reader to discover how, in this scene where Burt Williams
03:02confronts rival suitors, his improvised dialogue drops a half dozen F-bombs. It took 10 years to
03:10complete, but the newly titled Lime Kiln Club Field Day premiered in 2014. By then, Burt Williams had been
03:17dead for almost a century, felled by poor health and soul-sapping oppression. The funniest man I ever saw,
03:24and the saddest man I ever knew, said fellow comic WC Fields of Williams, whose funeral brought
03:29thousands of fans, black and white, to pay their respects. It's a sad story with a happy ending. The
03:37film Biograph wouldn't let the public see now survives with all its production footage, the only silent film
03:44film to do so. It took 101 years, but this lost film has been found for keeps.
