To Screen or Not to Screen: Birth of a Nation gets the boot

Yup, Lilian is one hott mama.

(I heart her btw)

(Possibly the NAACP were not big on the "contextualizing debate" idea because they knew it would be TOTALLY BORING.)

There’s also the issue that screening this is sort of an “academic” issue that doesn’t translate to the person on the street, which is possibly a consideration that those who object have in mind. It’s a consideration the organizer has in mind, too, clearly—hence the offer to make it explicitly academic, with discussion and such.

-- nabisco (--...) (webmail), August 11th, 2004 2:32 PM. (nabisco) (later) (link)

that's why i suggested that this film can be quietly screened at a theater attached to a museum or school, and hackles are typically only raised when a commercial cinema (no matter how marginal) wants to show it to the public. few would be likely to think MoMA or the national archive were endorsing the film's worldview, but it gets potentially more ambiguous when it's a commercial cinema. of course this particular cinema did a fine job of trying to advertise the screening in such a way as to placate those concerns, but i guess it didn't work.

that's why i think that, in the real world, it's probably best that places like the silent movie theater not try to show this film. (another reason: there are a million silent films that never get screened publicly that are just as exciting and historical interesting.)

s1ocki: the chicago summer silent film festival tends to show the same things year after year after year. well, there are always one or two curveballs. but otherwise it's: one german expressionist classick (NOSFERATU/METROPOLIS/CALIGARI/GOLEM), one colleen moore-type flapper romance, one Fairbanks swashbuckler, one louise brooks films, one buster keaton, and one other slapstick (maybe harold lloyd).

i don't really blame them, because they need name-value films that will attract paying customers (they rent out a huge old theater so the operating costs must be high), but still it's a little disappointing to see the same thing--or more or less the same thing--year after year.

the music box is a great place that does make its money from tickets and sodas and popcorn, but no matter how great their main programming, their choices for weekend matinees tend toward the conservative (i.e. more orson welles movies than you can shake a stick at, casablanca, etc.)

Yes I have seen it. I did not find it beautiful as you did, because it is fundamentally ugly, and I can't manage the form/content split you seem to have undertaken in order to enjoy it.
The racism is very far from genteel, yes. But by saying most LiT/BoN comparison is one of the stupidest things you've read here, you seem to be saying 'genteel racism' is okay, in a sense, or that comparing it with un-genteel racism is stupid. Of course the racism is worse in BoN. But instead of saying 'look how far we've come' it might be useful to consider how little mainstream narrative cinema has advanced in its depiction of Other cultures.

fuller was a really articulate anti-racist. he made some interesting comments to joseph mcbride about the theme of miscegnation running through john ford's work. and then you have white dog, a film so aggressive in its attack on racism that it was actually mistaken for being racist by certain fools.

i wish there were a good way to see white dog--it's been six years since i've seen it (a dub with spanish subtitles found at kim's in new york) but i found it extremely powerful and disturbing.

floats like a puddle.

"one scene has mae marsh leap from a cliff to her death to be spared the "fate worse than death"--being raped by a black man."

This is kind of a strange scene to pick out as an example of the film's racism.

the first half of this film is still pretty impressive -- the battle scenes are especially powerful and eerie to watch, it's almost like seeing newsreel footage of the civil war.

the second half is kind of boring, honestly.

i love that wilson quote - 'like history written in lightning'