Lime Kiln Field Day
| Lime Kiln Field Day | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Edwin Middleton T. Hayes Hunter Sam Corker Jr. (asst. dir.) |
| Produced by | Klaw and Erlanger |
| Written by | Charles Bertrand Lewis, Brother Gardner's Lime-Kiln Club (humor sketches for Detroit Free Press) |
| Starring |
Bert Williams Odessa Warren Grey Sam Lucas Sam Corker Jr. Abbie Mitchell |
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Production
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Release date
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Running time
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65 minutes; 7 reels (unfinished, unedited) |
| Country | United States |
| Language |
Silent film (no English intertitles) |
Lime Kiln Field Day, also known as Lime Kiln Club Field Day or Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day, is a 1913 American black-and-white silent film, and produced by the Biograph Company and Klaw and Erlanger. This is believed to be the oldest surviving film to feature African American actors.
Led by the famous Caribbean American musical theater performer and recording artist Bert Williams, the cast involved Harlem-based entertainment pioneers Sam Lucas, Abbie Mitchell, J. Leubrie Hill, Emma Reed, John Wesley (Wes) Jenkins (1859-1930), Walker Thompson (1887-1922), Billy Harper, and other theater performers, including members of J. Leubrie Hill’s Darktown Follies stage company.
Biograph Company was producing the film for Marcus Klaw and A. L. Erlanger in the Bronx, New York. Lime Kiln Field Day was shot at locations in New York as well as New Jersey using a 35mm camera at 19fps.
After filming over an hour of footage, the producers Klaw and Erlanger abandoned the project during post-production, leaving the film to be without a title and locked away by the Biograph Film Studio.
In 2014, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Screenings of the restored footage took place in October 2014 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and on June 1, 2015, at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
The only written reference to the footage was found in an obituary in the New York Age (August 1914) for Sam Corker Jr., a member of the films production crew. The obituary stated "Last fall he employed a large number of colored performers for the 'Lime Kiln Film Club' series of motion pictures produced by Klaw and Erlanger in which Bert A. Williams will be featured."
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