Nothing but a breakthrough
In the summer of 1963, two Harvard graduates teamed up to shoot a landmark independent feature film about the Jim Crow South. “Nothing But a Man,” released in 1964, was the first American movie to cast black actors as the leads in a vehicle intended for a general U.S. audience. The 92-minute film made its creators, director Michael Roemer ’49 and cinematographer Robert M. Young ’49, cinematic pioneers. Until that time, black actors either had been relegated to secondary roles in mainstream movies or had appeared in what were called race films, features that were shot between 1915 and 1950 and were marketed to black-only audiences. With the film’s 50th anniversary approaching and its Harvard provenance, the movie was a natural to lead off the 2013 season at the Harvard Film Archive, said programmer David Pendleton. But the immediate impetus, he said, was the recent release of a restored 35 mm print...