When Curious City ask listeners what they wanted to know about Chicago’s history as an epicenter of silent cinema, listener Joyce Miller-Bean asked us not to forget William Foster. Foster owned Foster Photoplay, which is considered to be the first Black-owned film production company in the U.S. that featured an all-Black cast.

I looked into Foster’s life and how it was on Chicago’s South Side where the start of Black cinema took root.

Independent Black cinema got its start on Chicago’s South Side