This diagram includes all of the people in our database who are associated with films: actors, directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, and “otherwise involved.” The people are connected by an edge if they worked together in some capacity on at least one film. Darker edges mean that the two people worked together multiple times. Larger node sizes mean that the person represented by the node has many connections to other people.

We were interested to discover that the network seems to be composed of one main component and a number of smaller components. The large network seems to be composed of people who worked on films produced by Oscar Micheaux, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, and Foster. Ebony film players are also deeply embedded within this larger network — intriguing, given the Ebony company’s controversial status as a race film company.

The range of less connected sub-networks seem to be associated with Peter P. Jones, Richard Maurice, and small companies that produced actualities.

IMAGE LEFT: The boundaries of the race filmmaking community are porous, but its actors, directors, producers, and writers did constitute a closely connected community, as this network diagram shows. Click the image to interact with the full version. You can learn how to make your own network diagram with our data here.