The Birth of a Nation - 1915 vs 2016

It's been the pride and shame of the film industry for over a hundred years - D. W. Griffith's epic, 3-hour long blockbuster detailing the end of the American Civil War, the death of Abraham Lincoln and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. It became legendary, not as a good film, but as a great film that was on the side of evil. Griffith's pioneering film techniques set the standard for every film since and created a powerful argument, unfortunately one that advocated white supremacy and presented African Americans, portrayed in blackface, as unclean, unintelligent and sexually aggressive. It is offered to film students as a challenge to separate style over content, and arguments remain to this day as to whether its filmic and technical importance should overshadow its racism.

This year, however, among the recurrence of whitewashed Hollywood blockbusters, most notably Alex Proyas's Gods of Egypt, has seen the emergence of a film which directly counters Griffith's unwatchably racist portrayal of freed slaves. Nate Parker helms and stars in the film of the same name which portrays the birth of a very different nation, in which a young slave preacher is taken on an inter-county preaching tour and, bearing witness to the full horror of slavery, is compelled to lead in a different way. The film is both spiritual and intellectual in its portrayal of the protagonist and his intense theological convictions.

While Griffith's film existed to inflame racial hatred and paint a comforting portrait of history for white people, Parker's answer exists to challenge our view of the past and debate the morality of violence and the ongoing struggle for justice and equality for black people in America. It has both historical and contemporary resonance, and, along with Steve McQueen's acclaimed 12 Years a Slave, signifies the continuation of an era in which we beginning to see, at last, truer representations of American slavery in all their horror.