(FILM WILLIAMS SPENCER) Blood of Jesus

Sale 2408 - Lot 266

Price Realized: $ 938

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

(FILM--WILLIAMS, SPENCER.) Blood of Jesus. Monochrome two sheet "press kit" with stills etc from the film; small folio, printed on rectos only; some darkening. Dallas, etc., circa 1941

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two rare promotional sheets for the legendary writer, producer, director, and actor, spencer williams. Blood of Jesus was the second film created by Spencer Williams, shot on a $5000 budget. Williams acted in the film himself and used amateur talent, mostly drawn from the parishioners of Reverend R.L. Robinson, the pastor in the film, whose Heavenly Choir was actually the choir from his church. "Blood of Jesus" was revolutionary in many respects, using existing footage from a 1911 Italian film called l'Inferno to show people ascending into heaven; and the use of non-actors to play ordinary people. Long thought to be lost, copies of the film turned up in a warehouse in Texas in the mid 1980's, with Dave Kehr of The New York Times calling the film "magnificent" and J. Hoberman of The Village Voice stating it is "a masterpiece of folk cinema that has scarcely lost its power to astonish." Filmmaker Julie Dash cited the baptismal sequence in The Blood of Jesus as the inspiration for a similar scene from her 1991 feature film Daughters of the Dust. In 1991, The Blood of Jesus became the first "race film" to be added to the U.S. National Film Registry.