A recent major discovery, Hell-Bound Train was made by self-taught 16mm filmmakers James and Eloyce Gist, African American evangelists who employed cinema as a tool for their traveling ministry. Their unique visual allegories were screened in churches and meeting halls, accompanied by a sermon and the passing of a collection plate. Decades before Snowpiercer (2013), the Gists use the cars of a doomed convoy as social metaphors—here the sins of the Jazz Age such as gambling, jazz, alcohol, and skipping church are staged in different train cars, all presided over by an eerily masked devil. Now featuring a newly created score by Dr. Samuel Waymon, best known to cineastes as having provided the moody music (and portrayed the minister/chauffeur) in Bill Gunn’s influential 1973 film Ganja & Hess.

DIRECTORS: Eloyce Gist, James Gist. WRITTEN BY: Eloyce Gist, James Gist. 1930. 50 min. USA. B&W. English. DCP.

Screening with The Blood of Jesus.

Part of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ exhibition “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971.”