Imagenation in Alliance with the Medgar Evers College 'Film & Culture Series'
USA, Dir. Jeymes Samuel, 60 min.
Drama
The Place: Langston, Oklahoma.The Time: 1890. Nat Love, Ben Hodges, Bill Pickett and Jim Beckwourth meet up in the saloon owned by the gun toting Stagecoach Mary. A tense card game leads each man to reveal his hand - a bounty on each of their heads. A silent pact is made - they are to have a shootout, with the last man standing taking the collective bounty, $80,000.
THEY DIE BY DAWN is a film based on the lives of historic Black Cowboys of the old west. With an all star cast including Erykah Badu, Giancarlo Esposito, Michael K Williams, Nate Parker, Jesse Williams, Rosario Dawson, Isaiah Washington, Bokeem Woodbine and Harry Lennix, the film sets out to tell the story of a showdown between the real life characters.
"They Die By Dawn" is a black cowboy Western that takes place in 1819. “Every time a black person is shown in a Western, they’re a slave. Every time you see them, there’s an explanation on why they’re there. There were decades after slavery of black people in the old West,” says British writer and director Jeymes Samuel, who wrote "They Die by Dawn" as a prelude to his next feature, "The Notorious Nine." “I wanted to depict characters from that time and place. All the characters [in "They Die by Dawn"] are real.”
Shot on the real set where John Wayne made his films, every actor who signed on to "They Die by Dawn," came through word of mouth. “This was for us by us,” says actor Michael K. Williams. “This was designed by love and passion and the desire to want to work with each other.”