Today marks the 100th anniversary of Hollywood becoming mainstream - albeit in a dark manner. On this day in 1916, D.W Griffith's Birth of a Nation was released nationwide in the USA. It became a sensation which allowed Hollywood to finally break free from Thomas Edison's patent bond, but it came with a price.
The film gave strength to the counter Emancipation movement, legitimizing both Jim Crow and the KKK. During these years what was the former Union turned against the blacks it had fought to liberate, race riots broke out across the American Great Lakes States, the worst in Chicago and Cleveland. None of the Presidents of the time (Wilson, Harding, Coolidge) spoke out against it.
Later this year Hollywood is releasing a rebuttal, The Birth of a Nation. It is the story of Nat Turner and the slave revolt he led in Virginia in 1831. The film is written, directed and starring Nate Parker, will it have a market?
The film gave strength to the counter Emancipation movement, legitimizing both Jim Crow and the KKK. During these years what was the former Union turned against the blacks it had fought to liberate, race riots broke out across the American Great Lakes States, the worst in Chicago and Cleveland. None of the Presidents of the time (Wilson, Harding, Coolidge) spoke out against it.
Later this year Hollywood is releasing a rebuttal, The Birth of a Nation. It is the story of Nat Turner and the slave revolt he led in Virginia in 1831. The film is written, directed and starring Nate Parker, will it have a market?
