Jenny Barrett: Birth of a Nation

 

 

In 1989 Sheffield City Council backed protest about the screening of DW Griffith’s film ‘The Birth of a Nation'(1915) for fear of racist repercussions.  The manager of the cinema was quoted as saying that it was so old nobody would take it seriously.  Then in 1993 when the film was scheduled for broadcast on channel 4, one of the historians responsible for the film’s restoration Kevin Brownlow commented :People will probably channel hop until halfway through […]. I expect the National Front will be asleep by the time the Halfway point comes and the Klan arrives. And yet,fellow restorer David Gill stated that a theatrical presentation with a live orches would be out of the question. When the film was honoured by inclusion in the National Registry of Film in 1992, board member and African American film maker John Singleton claimed that he put it on the list because ‘America at heart is racist’