In recounting the epic of a black preacher to lead a slave revolt in 1831 and titrating his film “Birth of a Nation” by DW Griffith like, young black filmmaker wants Nate Parker rewrite history and invent a future.
One could imagine better timing difficult. In turmoil on racism in Hollywood, the Sundance extols a black filmmaker who, on his Twitter account, presents itself as “activist”. Nate Parker is 36 years old, a computer diploma and a short acting career (seen in Spike Lee particular). He arrived in Park City, without warning, with a first epic film for which he fought hard for seven years. He walked away with prices (or almost), the sale of his film at Fox sprayed records (17.5 million, Netflix offered 20) despite a festival known for fever, and columnists Hollywood already predicting his golden career to the next Oscars.
“As an artist and as a black man, I wanted to reclaim me that title.” Nate Parker
triumphant in Utah, Nate Parker also begins to rewrite history. It was his first goal: his film is titled Birth of a Nation, such as DW Griffith, 100 years ago, which unleashed racist black people and sparked the protest movements in all the countries. “Hollywood was well founded, there is nothing surprising that the poison is in the fruit, Nate Parker said after the screening of his film. Griffith led us down the wrong path. As an artist and as a black man, I wanted to reclaim me as such, so that when we hear Birth of a Nation, you do not think about the old propaganda, but rather to resistance, self-determination, the birth of a new nation, a nation decided to examine his wounds heal for moving forward “
Beyond the controversy over the absence of color at the next Academy Awards nominees, the triumph of Nate Parker on independent cinema land participates in the rise of a new generation of artists and American black intellectuals claiming compensation for Slavery – the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, acclaimed for his Black Anger – or the establishment of a commission of “truth and reconciliation” as in South Africa (the lawyer Bryan Stevenson, presented as the American Mandela. The Birth of a Nation Nate Parker dives also in the years of slavery to rewrite the epic of Nat Turner, black preacher, who, in 1831, led Virginia one of the most famous slave revolts of American History.
Nate Parker says he is obsessed by the figure of the hero, who lived in the same region as him, since he learned of sitting on the benches of the university. He said he was shocked to find that the revolt of Nat Turner was told in any of the books of History who had accompanied him in his schooling. The fiction is already interested in the tumultuous journey of Turner (a controversial episode of Roots, a film of Charles Burnett …), but the most famous book, The Confessions of Nat Turner, signed William Styron, had deeply shaken the American black intellectuals who do not agree on the representation of black America by white writer (and which brought him the Pulitzer Prize).
According to the echoes that return us to Sundance, the Birth of a Nation 2016 version is tailored to please the public. Nate Parker produced his film completely independently (basketball player Tony Parker made a part of the money), but for big action scenes, he got advice from old Hollywood Road, Mel Gibson and Edward Zwick (director Glory on an episode of the Civil War). Critics are sometimes mixed, sometimes enthusiastic like the New York Times that speaks of a film “magnificent, painful and powerful, combining the ethereal beauty of the South and brutality cut the breath of slavery “ In a country where soaring protest movements from the riots Ferguson and Baltimore, the shock wave was quickly exceeded the luimême film. The standing ovation, that followed the screening, has shaken the great theater Sundance as ever, but the film crew had already been acclaimed before the room is plunged into darkness. And Nate Parker, who said he had given the role of Nat Tuner because Hollywood did not offer him anything satisfactory, quickly claimed that his production was above all a political gesture, a manifesto against the “persistent racism” in the United States: “I do not attack me with symptoms, but the disease. “
American journalists wonder if the film will soon be screened at the White House. An important symbol. In March 1915, indeed, the Birth of a Nation was shown to President Woodrow Wilson, a South Democrat who won the Nobel Peace Prize but did much to reinforce segregation. “It is like writing history with lightning” was thrilled with President D. W. Griffith. There are a hundred years old, Birth of a Nation was a massive undertaking who signed the flight of an art and an industry. An advertising campaign as we had never seen spread out from one coast to the other in America, chartered special trains were leading crowds to the cinema to discover their “bloody evocation of true American spirit “” 18,000 extras, 3,000 horses, eight months location “ announced the advertisements to praise the merits of an epic new kind.
Nate Parker him n ‘ filmed during 27 days, with a tight budget for a historical film, but he knows his film to travel and record in history. In 1915, the output of Birth of a Nation had a strong impact on the political organization of black Americans. For two years, they have increased the sometimes violent demonstrations, near the cinemas. A bomb exploded in a movie theater in Times Square, black soldiers were blocking projections in Arizona, festive parades gathered tens of thousands of opponents in Griffith. Black Americans found in this wave, the energy of a collective force they did not suspect. And according Cara Caddoo, author of Envisioning Freedom ( The Freedom for ) Birth of a Nation encouraged to produce their own works and to tell themselves. One hundred years later, the claims are identical.
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