It was after the end of World War II in Europe that American crime films, embargoed during the occupation, started flooding French cinemas. Films like The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944), and Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) received their first screenings in France, prompting critics to sit up and take notice—and Nino Frank to coin the term “film noir.”

Lockdown got you down? Miss live music? The Dryden Theatre has the next best thing with this series of concert films. Filmmakers had always been attempting to record sound along with motion picture film, but it was advancements in synchronized recording in the 1950s and the portability of 16mm cameras that made documenting real-time music performances possible.

“Race film” is a term coined to refer to films with Black casts created for Black audiences during the time period from 1915 to 1950. This summer, the Dryden Theatre presents four silent feature-length race films as they were meant to be seen—on film, with an audience, with live accompaniment.