The Exile is a 1931 American film directed by Oscar Micheaux with choreography by Leonard Harper. A drama-romance of the race film genre, The Exile was Micheaux's first feature-length sound film, and the first African-American sound film. Adapted from Micheaux's first novel The Conquest (1913), it the film shares some autobiographical elements; for example, Micheaux spent several years as a cattle rancher in an otherwise all-white area of South Dakota as does the film's central character Jean Baptiste.
Poster for The Exile, "Mighty epic of modern Negro life"
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (; was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and controlled by black filmmakers, Micheaux is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, a prominent producer of race films, and has been described as "the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century". He produced both silent films and sound films.
Micheaux c. 1913
Micheaux in 1919
Grave of Oscar Micheaux in Great Bend being decorated during the 2005 Oscar Micheaux festival.