JUKE: PASSAGES FROM THE FILMS OF SPENCER WILLIAMS

Spencer Williams was a pioneering African American screenwriter, director, and actor in the 1940s. Juke reconsiders Williams’ melodramas which centered on sinners and saints who are tempted by jazz and sex and then set back on the glory road to salvation.

At the intersection of gospel and the blues, halfway between the bar and the church, lives the work of actor-director Spencer Williams. In this stunning work of archival montage, Thom Anderson frees Williams’ films from the constraints of plot, for a dynamic chronicle of Black life in 1940s Texas.