Heaven-Bound Traveler

James and Eloyce Gist were not professional filmmakers but they were filmmaker nonetheless. Eloyce studied music at Howard University and became an entrepreneur who founded a beauty college. James was a Christian evangelist and, though Eloyce belonged to the Bahá'í faith, they met and married in the late 1920s and Eloyce became a partner on his evangelical mission, which included making films to accompany their sermons. These were amateur efforts made without professional equipment or studio facilities, using non-professional actors and shooting 16mm film without sound. Eloyce became intimately involved with the production of these films beginning with Hell-Bound Train (circa 1930), a short feature that tackled the issue of temperance in an allegorical narrative. Historical information on their work is scarce but according to her daughter, Eloyce completely rewrote the original script, reedited the footage, and helped with reshoots. With their follow-up, the short film Verdict: Not Guilty (circa 1933), Eloyce was intimately involved in writing, directing, and producing. All of their films were shot without sound, using intertitles with commentary, dialogue, and passages from the Bible. Unlike the features and short films made for black cinemas, for which multiple 35mm prints were created to distribute to theaters, the films of James and Eloyce Gist were one-of-a-kind. There were no additional prints in circulation. The Gists carried their films with them as they traveled, screening them in churches and community centers on portable 16mm projectors. Eloyce would accompany the film on piano and James would deliver a sermon after the screening. There is also evidence that the NAACP screened their films for special events. James died in 1940 and Eloyce continued to travel with the films for a few years before the strain became too much. The films were donated to the Library of Congress after her death in 1974. According to Library of Congress records, the films were received in hundreds of short fragments, having fallen apart along the splices from wear over the years. The versions that exist today have been reconstructed and restored from these fragments. Verdict: Not Guilty (circa 1933) is the ultimate spoiler of a title. Part religious allegory and part church pageant, it presents the heavenly trial of a woman who has died giving childbirth out of wedlock. The jailer wears a mask death's head mask and a nun's habit with a skull and crossbones on the front and God sits on an altar, flanked by angels, while the devil attempts to convict the woman for her sins. Shot with a handheld camera that doesn't always remain steady or keep the scene in frame, it is full of religious imagery and evocative folkloric elements, with flashbacks to the woman's life that provide a realism in sharp contrast to the allegorical pageantry. It shows its amateur origins, especially next to the low-budget but professionally produced films of Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, but the texture, the pageantry, and the allegorical and ritualistic elements also looks forward to the American Underground cinema of Kenneth Anger, Curtis Harrington, and others in the 1950s and 1960s. Presented with a score composed and performed by Dr. Samuel Waymon. Heaven-Bound Travelers (circa 1935) was discovered among the rolls of film in the Gist collection at the Library of Congress by S. Torriano Berry during the recent restoration of Hell-Bound Train. Eloyce Gist takes a central role onscreen as a wife and mother who is wrongfully accused of adultery by her husband and is left to fend for herself and their daughter in the world. As she struggles to sustain them, the husband becomes riddled with guilt and struggles with his decision, and the social realism of the drama shifts to an allegorical struggle between the devil, appearing to tempt humanity to sin, and the angels. In one scene they even battle, the devil's pitchfork parried by the sword of an angel. The costumes are simple but evocative creations that could have come from a passion play but the presentation is serious, directed without any hint of campy excess or comic relief, and even the framing of scenes shows a growing sophistication. The film does not exist in complete form but the fragments show a project of ambitious scope. Presented with a score composed and performed by Dr. Samuel Waymon. Sources: Oscar Micheaux and his Circle, ed. Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines and Charles Musser. Indiana University Press, 2001. "Eloyce King Patrick Gist," Kyna Morgan. Women Film Pioneers Project, 2013. "The Silent Era: Women Behind the Camera," no author cited. Library of Congress, Moving Image Collection. By Sean Axmaker