Sermons and Sacred Pictures: The Life and Work of Reverend L.O. Taylor

Sermons and Sacred Pictures: The Life and Work of Reverend L.O. Taylor, a candid bio of the Memphis preacher and filmmaker, and The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts, a feminist critique of the Western notion of the body. Ted Shen, Chicago Reader April 22, 1994

Sachs will be on hand to discuss her work after the screening. This film profiles the life and work of Reverend L.O. Taylor, a black Baptist minister from Memphis, Tennessee. In the 1930s and 1940s Rev. Taylor built a reputation as a fiery preacher who laced his sermons with parables, fables and dramatic visual descriptions. In addition to his ministry work, Rev. Taylor was also an inspired photographer and filmmaker with a keen interest in preserving a visual and aural record of the social, cultural, and religious fabric of black American life. He photographed and filmed businesses and schools in the black community, trips to the National Baptist Convention, baptisms, funerals, social events, and individuals in the quiet dignity of their everyday lives. Over the years he compiled an extraordinary record of black life in the South before the Civil Rights movement captured the attention of the nation. Sermons and Sacred Pictures innovatively combines Rev. Taylor’s black-and-white films and audio recordings with Sachs color images of contemporary Memphis neighborhoods and religious gatherings. Commentary by his widow and others who knew him forms an intertwined narrative focusing on Rev. Taylor as a pioneering documentarian and social activist. Taylor emerges as a man of humor, piety and intelligence, vibrantly involved in the community he loved.