The Birth of a Nation
Provocative vision of slavery in the South: coming to theaters Oct. 7
When The Birth of a Nation premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last January, it was as explosive an event as the slave uprising depicted in the film. Critics raved; it swept up the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, becoming the favorite of insiders, opinion makers and the mass of festival-goers. Fox Searchlight picked up the movie for $17.5 million—a whopping sum for an independent film—and will release it in theaters October 7.
But most important, the movie will redress a grievous wrong perpetuated by the original, silent Birth of a Nation, which was directed by D.W. Griffith. That film, though a watershed in film history—it was, in 1915, the first feature-length film ever, masterful in its advance of movie story-telling and a colossal hit that helped to establish the film industry—presents the freed slaves of the post–Civil War South as threatening monsters and the KKK as saviors. Griffith may have been one of the cinema’s great geniuses, but his Birth of a Nation is racist propaganda at its most despicable.
The new Birth of a Nation is about Nat Turner, a slave preacher who, as witness to the dehumanization of African-Americans in the antebellum South, becomes the leader of a bloody and historic slave rebellion. Turner is played by Nate Parker, who also makes his directorial debut. With its serious and shocking subject matter, the new Birth of a Nation is as much a watershed as the original and a modern-day triumph: a chance for African-Americans to finally own their own history in film, and to do it brilliantly.
