THE FLYING ACE w/ Pipe Organ Score by Jeff Rapsis!
Fri, Feb 20
|Epsilon Spires
Celebrate Black History Month with the 100th Anniversary of THE FLYING ACE with a dynamic live soundtrack performed on our Estey pipe organ! A rare surviving example of silent films produced early in the 20th century intended for Black audiences in segregated cinemas, featuring an All-Black cast.
Time & Location
Feb 20, 2026, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Epsilon Spires, 190 Main St, Brattleboro, VT 05301, USA
About the event
Can discrimination exist in an America where everyone is Black? That's among the questions posted by THE FLYING ACE (Dir. Richard E. Norman, 60 mins, 1926). A former railway detective turned decorated fighter pilot comes home from the Great War just in time to foil nefarious local ne’er-do-wells and save the girl. The only "Race Film" production by Jacksonville’s Norman Studios to survive in its entirety features an all-Black cast led by Laurence Criner and Kathryn Boyd and inspired a generation of real-life heroes and first Black pilots to fly with the U.S. Air Force, the Tuskegee Airmen.
The Flying Ace was inspired by Bessie Coleman, America’s first black female licensed pilot, with whom filmmaker Richard Norman had discussed making an aviation movie. Unfortunately, Coleman was killed in an April 1926 plane crash while practicing for an air show at Jacksonville’s Paxon Airfield, now the Paxon School for Advanced Studies. Norman based…
Tickets
THE FLYING ACE w/ Pipe Organ!
Popcorn included! Bring cash for the bar.
$25.00
SLIDING-SCALE TICKET
$
Total
$0.00