A look at the extraordinary achievements and contemporary legacy of Oscar Micheaux, a pioneer of the African-American film industry.

In 1939, a group of African American intellectuals come up with an ingenious and unlikely response to Jim Crow America — leave the planet and populate Mars. Using technology created by George Washington Carver, a three-person crew (plus one rambunctious robot) lift-off in Earth’s first working spaceship on a mission that will take them to a world not unlike present-day America. Their spacey adventure illuminates some hard truths about American culture, and threatens to undermine the time-line of history along the way.