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Black History Month
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Turner Classic Movies continues its monthlong Sunday evening salute to influential Black films, actors and filmmakers tonight, beginning with the 1943 musical Stormy Weather (pictured).
Taking its title from the 1933 popular song of the same name, the film is loosely based on the life of its star, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the tap dancer/singer/actor who started performing during the age of minstrel shows and whose talent, influence and challenging of racial barriers went on to extend into all the major media of the first half of the 20th century — vaudeville, Broadway, the recording industry, movies, radio and television. The all-Black cast of the groundbreaking film boasts a who’s-who roster of top African American performers of its era, in addition
to Robinson, including Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Katherine Dunham, Fats Waller,
the Nicholas brothers, Ada Brown, Dooley Wilson and more. After that, the rest of the evening belongs to Oscar Micheaux, the Black filmmaking pioneer whose influential productions extended from the silent era to just before his passing in 1951. TCM will air the U.S. premiere of Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking, a 2021 documentary about his life and work that was nominated for the Cannes Film Festival’s Golden Eye documentary filmmaking award last year. That is followed by two silent films written, produced and
directed by Micheaux, both from 1920: Within Our Gates and The Symbol of the
Unconquered. — Jeff Pfeiffer