#the birth of a nation

[choupistickfaitdesbetises]

What a small world it is... even smaller, the one that is Hollywood...

When the common point between Timothée and Colman is not only a building in Hell's Kitchen ! 😁😉

[colorhollywood]

My Favorite Silent Films:

Der Student von Prag (1913) Directed by Stellan Rye

Cabria (1914) Director Giovanni Pastrone

Fantômas (1916) Director Louis Feuillade

Les Vampires (1915) Director Louis Feuillade

The Birth of a Nation (1915) Director D.W. Griffith

Judex (1916) Director Louis Feuillade

J'accuse (1919) Director Abel Gance

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) Director Robert Wiene

Körkarlen (1921) Director Victor Sjöström

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922) Director Fritz Lang

The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924) Directed by Mauritz Stiller

Bronenosets Potyomkin (1925) Director Sergei Eisenstein

The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Director Rupert Julian

Napoleon (1927) Director Abel Gance

Metropolis (1927) Director Fritz Lang

[citizenscreen]

D.W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION opened in New York City on March 3, 1915, a few weeks after its West Coast premiere in Los Angeles.

[blackstar1887]

Nat Turner: A Rebel's Quest for Freedom and Inspiring Resistance

[jimforce]

Throwback Video

With its 110th anniversary this week, I wanted to throwback to the film many consider cinemas first. It’s not really the first and it’s only influence is that it was a hit and showed full length movies can make money. But it’s insanely racist and not really a good movie at all. I talked about that and how it shouldn’t be viewed as much as it should in film history.

[apocalypticavolition]

1,000 Greatest Films: The Birth of a Nation

This picture is actually from a 2016 film because fuck sharing even a single image from the movie I watched today. (Except the one I'll share later I guess but it's not a great opener.) It's definitely a good thing I decided to watch They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?'s 2025 list of 1,000 Greatest Films in chronological order (quick recap go!) because now I'm done with this shit.

Funny story, when I Googled "Birth of a Nation streaming", it pulled the Hulu page for the 2016 film which included the phrase "fact-based drama" and I almost went through the roof in outrage. Then I watched this movie on YouTube and I'd officially like to condemn every critic who puts this film on their best films lists for sheer moral turpitude.

I don't care that the film's director, D. W. Griffith invented a whole bunch of camera nonsense for this film. Sure, there's some clear technical upgrades on that front compared to the last film I watched. This film did crosscutting, dissolves, closeups, and sure that's great but it's not like some of these techniques wouldn't have been invented if this film didn't exist. The score is likewise incredible, three hours long and a mash-up of classics and an original score, and it's all very well-done. So Roger Ebert, who is burning in hell for calling this a good movie, was right about that.

But this film, filled with blackface and Confederate apologia, is just not good even if you can put that horribly racist shit aside. It's three hours, fifteen minutes long, starting almost immediately before the Civil War and stretching out interminably beyond that. There's some great stuff with kitties and puppies right at the beginning of the movie, and honestly the scene setting is fine. Yes, the main characters are slaveholding bastards, but that part is at least accurate and Elsie Stoneman's slow romance with Benjamin Cameron is fine. It's so cliche that the film points out it's cliche, but it's fine.

The description of how the Civil War began? Not remotely fine. It's all the evil Abraham Lincoln's fault in this film. If you know anything about the Civil War, you'll know that that's not true, but... D. W. Griffith clearly knew nothing about the Civil War, which makes sense since his father was a Confederate colonel. Thomas Dixon Jr, who'd written the play this film is based off of, also knew nothing about the Civil War (not only was his father a former slave-owner, but also a Baptist minister, so even more ignorant). Woodrow Wilson, a president whose work this film quotes and who got a private showing in the White House, also apparently knew nothing about the Civil War, having grown up in Augusta, Georgia and thus being a regrettable survivor of Sherman's March.

One of the three parts of this movie I'll actually respect is its depiction of the burning of Atlanta by Sherman, by the way. At first I was cheering for him out of spite, but the horror and panic of the masses as everything around them burns, tinted red because old films like this can only do one color at a time made me feel mildly bad for all of those bastards.

Likewise, the Siege of Petersberg is a magnificent moment, the real highlight of the film. I can't imagine how they could possibly have filmed this a century ago. You really do feel like a battle involving thousands of soldiers is raging and the film's constant, "Oh yes war is always bad and not totally awesome when we get to lynch people" disclaimers actually feel mildly sincere. The Confederates are losing so it's still self-serving but hey. If this had been the climax of the movie, it would have been... well, still hella racist, but at least a film that would only be bad because of the racism.

The third and final part I liked, immediately following the Siege, is the aftermath. The Colonel Cameron, injured in battle, is reunited with Elsie and then his mother (she's dealing with the loss of her other sons). He's condemned to be hanged but they find Lincoln and appeal to him personally! Inexplicably considering he's portrayed as a war-hungry monster, he agrees to pardon the colonel and all will be well. Benjamin tries to take Elsie to a night at the theater being put on for Lincoln, but... well, you can imagine how that goes. But again, it's actually portrayed kind of decently? Look at their Booth! This is not how you portray an assassin you support, I'm just saying.

And this is the part in the original film where there'd be an intermission for the audience. 97 minutes done, 97 minutes to go, and they are horrible minutes. It's not just the blatant historical revisionism, nor the collapse of the only nod towards moral complexity with all the Union-aligned characters becoming antagonists, nor the overlong sequence in which some random black dude tries to rape some white girl (so upsetting to contemporary audiences that one southerner started firing his gun to try and help her), it's the way that all of these factors and more coalesce into an unwatchable mess that tries to present the KKK as some glorious faction protecting the dignity of whites everywhere. It's bad cinema, folks!

I was fine with this list's many contributors grandfathering in La voyage dans la lune despite it probably not actually being one of the best films of all time because it had a lot of spirit and adventure. This film though can only realistically claim being the first at things. It's not actually good outside of that, and anyone who thinks being first is worth noting... probably spent a lot of time in the last ten years posting "First!" on every comments section they found instead of doing anything useful with their lives.

Unless you are specifically a student of film history, do not watch this film. It's long, it's boring, it's offensive, and, oh yeah...

It single-handedly revived the Ku Klux Klan!

If this movie had never been made, the KKK would be an irrelevant group today if it existed at all, and for that it cannot possibly be one of the 1,000 best films, or 10,000 best films, or 100,000 best films, or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 best films. I sure as fuck hope the other films on this list by this man are less damaging to society than this one was, because there's three more of them and at this rate I'm going to assume that Broken Blossoms was the inspiration for Exxon or something.

But before that film, how about a film that's seven hours long, and French?

(I'm beginning to worry about film critics.)

My opinions on Les Vampires, or at least the first episode or two, coming soon!

[oldshowbiz]

1962.

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the ku klux klan hosted screenings of D.W. Griifth's The Birth of a Nation to raise money.

[byneddiedingo]

The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

Cast: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Mary Alden, Ralph Lewis, George Siegmann, Walter Long, Robert Harron, Wallace Reid, Joseph Henabery, Elmer Clifton, Josephine Crowell, Spottiswoode Aitken, George Beranger, Maxfield Stanley, Jennie Lee, Donald Crisp, Howard Gaye, Raoul Walsh. Screenplay: Thomas Dixon Jr., D.W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods, based on a novel and play by Dixon. Cinematography: G.W. Bitzer. Film editing: D.W. Griffith, Joseph Henabery, James Smith, Rose Smith, Raoul Walsh. 

Is it an overstatement to say that the stench of The Birth of a Nation is more than a subset of the blight cast on American society and politics by slavery? Because Griffith's film informed an entire industry, not only with its undeniable influence on the language and grammar of film, but also in the tendency to valorize bigness above intimacy, action over thought, sensation over understanding that has characterized the mainstream of American movies. It was the first blockbuster. It was both intelligently crafted and abominably stupid. It just might be the most pernicious work of art ever made, a magnificent nauseating lie. Its portrait of Reconstruction warped the teaching of history for generations, and although the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan that it inspired has waned, we still find ourselves swatting down the heirs of the Klan like the Proud Boys, the Promise Keepers, and others who would defend what one of Griffith's title cards calls the "Aryan birthright." Even the reaction against The Birth of a Nation has its dark side: The recognition of the power of movies that followed its release eventually produced calls for censorship that would hamstring the medium. On the right, a suspicion that movies had the power to promote a leftist agenda led to the blacklist era, in which communists, not racists, were the target. And what is the crusade by some against "wokeness" in the media but another call for the kind of ideological purity that would stifle art? So to call The Birth of a Nation an essential film is an understatement. Looking at it as a demonstration of the ability of cinema to profoundly affect society could reveal it to be the most important movie ever made.     

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[pop-sesivo]

Esta es una conversación entre el director D.W. Griffith y el actor Walter Huston en 1930, en la que Griffith habla de The Birth of a Nation. "El Klan era necesario entonces", dice el director. Curioso escuchar su voz y su defensa del Ku Klux Klan.

This is a conversation between director D.W. Griffith and actor Walter Huston in 1930, in which Griffith discusses The Birth of a Nation. "The Klan was necessary then," says the director. Curious to hear his voice and his defense of the Ku Klux Klan.

[wishchip106]

he gave birth to her btw

i know because i was in the delivery room holding his hand when Erik didn’t come 🫡

thats his baby 🙁

Jean only calls him professor because she doesn’t want the other kids to think of her differently 😔💔

[citizenscreen]

On January 1, 1915, audiences in Riverside, California were shown a sneak preview of D.W. Griffith’s ‘The Clansman’ the Loring Opera House. The movie was later renamed ‘The Birth of a Nation.’ #OnThisDay

[viktors-sternomastoid]

Random Viktor hands - 28/many

That last one gives me the ick lol

[carolofthebell]

My latest obsession:

@rubydianarts animatic of Get in the Water from Epic: the Musical with Hama!

It’s perfection

[m0dernchr0n1cles]

Yinglong & Ao Bing

from Ao Bing Zhuan

Credit to @oubing_bot, read full manga here

Did anyone else get Ursa vibes from Yinglong?

[lesbianfreyja]

not to be on my anti-baby shit again but could we ever get 1 pregnancy plotline where they get an abortion instead of dithering about it for 1 episode to let the audience know "abortion is ok bc we considered it<3" and then the mc "decides" that "despite being pro choice and knocked up accidentally in a bad situation " she "totally wants to go thru with it personally"