ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997 TAG: 9703100054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR THE ROANOKE TIMES
They worked for nearly a year to highlight the work of black filmmaker Their home is comfortable and inviting, despite its artsy clutter and otherworldly aura.
The rooms smell of sweets and spices. A sign on the front door asks visitors to kindly remove their shoes. A computer and printer mingle with tall drums and masks carved of plastic foam.
This is a place of peace, a house in Northwest Roanoke where Hadassah Stowe and LeRoy Lowe settled three years ago.
They are artists - she a 53-year-old teacher, published poet and playwright from Kannapolis, N.C.; he a 54-year-old musician, singer and actor from New Castle, Pa. As "Stowe & Lowe Productions," they spread an awareness of African folklore, poetry and music to the beat of the African drum.
Together, they promote unity and an awareness of those outside our own cultural cocoons.
And yet they were drawn into controversy over an event that was intended to ease racial ill will and promote a blending of cultures.
They worked for nearly a year to plan Roanoke's first African American Film Festival, wrapped around the work of pioneer black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.
They had heard of Micheaux and his films of the 1920s and 30s, films that carried bold messages about black life - of blacks "passing" as whites, of lynchings, of interracial marriage.
Last year, Stowe and Lowe attended a community meeting on the redevelopment of Henry Street, once Roanoke's black commercial and entertainment district. They were particularly interested in preservation of the old Lincoln Theater on Henry Street, which became the Morocco Club and finally the Ebony Lounge before it closed.
Stowe and Lowe discovered at that meeting that Micheaux had made a movie in Roanoke in 1923 - at a home on Gilmer Avenue, blocks from what is now the Henry Street Music Center.
But Micheaux never got a chance to show the film - called "The House Behind the Cedars" - at the Lincoln Theater, or anywhere else in Virginia. The film was rejected by Virginia censors.
For Stowe and Lowe, the flame was ignited. They craved to know more about Micheaux.
"It was as if Oscar was saying, 'Hey, let's look at this thing,''' Stowe said. And in a section of Roanoke over which black residents and the city have engaged in a long tug-of-war, "here was the messenger resurging where there is so much controversy going on," she said.
Stowe contacted a writer friend in North Carolina, who told her about an English professor at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, an "Oscar Micheaux scholar," she said.
That led Stowe and Lowe to the little-known Oscar Micheaux Society, to its monthly newsletter and eventually to an idea for a film festival in Roanoke that would feature Micheaux's work. The festival would highlight a piece of Roanoke's artistic history and help promote the couple's proposal to convert the old Lincoln Theater into a film house named for Micheaux.
"The more we got into his life, the more he got into our lives," Lowe said.
With the help of a hand-picked multiethnic planning board and sponsorship from Roanoke's Plowshare Peace & Justice Center, Stowe and Lowe pulled together a daylong festival to be held March 16.
But on the day the couple had planned a news conference to announce the festival, they ran smack into upheaval.
Stowe, Lowe and the film festival board had planned to hold the festival at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center. On Feb. 26, the national NAACP called for a boycott of 10 leading hotel chains, including Doubletree Hotels Inc., assailing the lodging industry's record of hiring and promoting blacks. Doubletree operates the Hotel Roanoke.
Stowe and Lowe canceled the news conference, which had been scheduled for Friday, Feb. 28. By Monday, March 3, the festival board had voted unanimously to move the event to Roanoke's Jefferson Center.
"We didn't want to cross into territory that's a problem," said Marylen Harmon, a Northside Middle School teacher and cultural researcher who is a member of the festival board. "We don't want any animosity and harshness or bad feelings."
Pearl Fu, unofficial ambassador of Roanoke and member of the film festival board, said she worried what impact pulling out of the Hotel Roanoke would have on the festival.
"I'm very torn between what's happening now," Fu said. "It's a shame that it happened at this moment."
Stowe and Lowe supported the board's decision, even though it meant reprinting fliers and scrambling to find a new location.
"It would have been difficult to go to the African American community and say 'Come on over here,''' Lowe said. "We didn't even want to deal with that. We felt we couldn't overcome that."
So they swallowed the added costs and found a new location.
"It was a setback for us," Stowe said.
The couple have nearly emptied their pockets into the film festival. Response to requests to Roanoke area businesses for sponsorship has been less than enthusiastic.
"Consequently, we don't have a car at this point," Stowe said (it needs repairs). "And we're eating beans and rice until it's coming out of our ears."
"Conscious suffering," Lowe said. "You have to take risks. You have to suffer. You put up what you've got for something if it's all that you've got.''
They made a plea to film director Spike Lee during his visit to Washington and Lee University in Lexington last week. They hand-delivered a packet of information about the film festival to him after his presentation.
At the bottom of a cover letter, Lowe wrote "H-E-L-P."
The festival will go on as planned, whether it grabs Lee's attention or not, Lowe said. But the festival isn't likely to include a showing of "The House Behind the Cedars," the film Micheaux made in Roanoke. Stowe and Lowe have searched for the film - by fax and phone, over the Internet and at the Library of Congress in Washington - without success.
The original probably disintegrated years ago. But Lowe said he was told that a copy of the film in a type of "paper film" form does exist - somewhere. He and Stowe did discover that Micheaux remade the film as "The Veiled Aristocrat" in Chicago in 1932. That film will be shown at the festival.
"All we want to do is accentuate the fact that we had a very productive group of people here in the 1920s and 30s," Lowe said. "And we want people to remember that."
The African American Film Festival will be held next Sunday at the Jefferson Center, 541 Luck Ave. S.W., from 1:30-9:15 p.m. Tickets are $10. The festival will feature "The Veiled Aristocrat," a film by Oscar Micheaux; "Sankofa," a film by Haile Gerima, an Ethiopian filmmaker; and "Midnight Ramble," a film about Micheaux's life and work.
Guest speakers include civil rights attorney Oliver Hill, who, as a child, appeared in the film Micheaux made in Roanoke. For more information, call 985-0808. Tickets can be purchased at the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge office at Center in the Square in downtown Roanoke and at the Harrison Museum of African American Culture.
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART. LeRoy Lowe and Hadassah Stowe are theby CNBdriving force behind the first African American Film Festival, set
for next Sunday. color.