February 8, 1915 -- Los Angeles premiere at the Clune Auditorium of The Birth of A Nation
Sources:
Book:
D.W. Griffith's the Birth of a Nation:
A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time
Melvyn Stokes
History Channel:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist ... tion-opens" target="_blank
100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February 8
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misteranalog
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misteranalog
- Posts: 64
- Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2013 9:32 am
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
TIME Magazine weighs in on the 100th Anniversary of The Birthof A Nation
http://time.com/3699084/100-years-birth-of-a-nation/" target="_blank
http://time.com/3699084/100-years-birth-of-a-nation/" target="_blank
-
misteranalog
- Posts: 64
- Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2013 9:32 am
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
The Birth of A Quotation about the The Birth of a Nation
Woodrow Wilson actually said about The Birth of a Nation was:
"it teaches history by lightning""
ALSO:
The Birth of a Nation was actually the second movie shown in the White House
Cabiria had been the first movie shown in the White Hous in 1914
In:
Mark Benbow
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 09/2010; 9(04):509 - 533
Woodrow Wilson actually said about The Birth of a Nation was:
"it teaches history by lightning""
ALSO:
The Birth of a Nation was actually the second movie shown in the White House
Cabiria had been the first movie shown in the White Hous in 1914
In:
Mark Benbow
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 09/2010; 9(04):509 - 533
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
And in today's Bergen Record, where I'm even quoted...
http://www.northjersey.com/news/a-paten ... -1.1266900
A patently offensive 'Birth of a Nation' turns 100
FEBRUARY 7, 2015, 11:52 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2015, 9:29 AM
BY JIM BECKERMAN
STAFF WRITER | THE RECORD
Today, Hollywood celebrates 100 years as a cultural force — all because of a film so embarrassing it can now barely be shown.
Civil War blockbuster “The Birth of a Nation,” released Feb. 8, 1915, gave new life to the Ku Klux Klan.
“The Birth of a Nation” had its sensational debut at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles a century ago today — Feb. 8, 1915. Ironically, just in time for Black History Month, if the 1926 observance had existed then.
Civil War blockbuster “The Birth of a Nation,” released Feb. 8, 1915, gave new life to the Ku Klux Klan.
The Civil War blockbuster “The Birth of a Nation,” released Feb. 8, 1915, gave new life to the KKK. By 1926, the Klan claimed 5 milion members.
It marked the birth of several other things as well: the birth of the movies as a big business and an art, the birth of the modern civil rights movement, the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and the birth of a debate about movie censorship that is as current as “The Interview.”
No one, back in 1915, had ever seen anything like D.W. Griffith’s Civil War blockbuster — with its sheer length (three hours), epic battle scenes, innovative use of tracking shots, cross-cutting and expressive close-ups. The climactic ride-to-the-rescue had audiences on their feet, wildly cheering and applauding.
Only thing, of course: The heroes riding to the rescue were the Ku Klux Klan (scored, in the original showings, to a live orchestra playing “Ride of the Valkyries,” an effect echoed 64 years later in “Apocalypse Now”). And the villains were African-Americans.
“The images are so blatant,” said Wartyna Davis, an associate dean at William Paterson University in Wayne, who has taught courses in African-American politics and popular culture and politics, and has screened excerpts from the film for her students.
Fools, upstarts, vicious rapists of white women: Those are just some of the black caricatures (many rendered by whites in blackface) that make “The Birth of a Nation,” today, a film to be more deplored than shown. “Clearly, this film is saying that black enfranchisement equals white subordination,” Davis said. “That still resonates in some political circles.”
And this is an offensive film, not just by the standards of our own time, but also for many back in 1915, when it spurred the mobilization of African-Americans as few things before or since.
“This movie was appalling to blacks in America,” said Dick Lehr, journalism professor at Boston University. It was, among other things, a huge recruitment tool for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, formed only six years earlier by a coalition of African-Americans and whites. “A very big part of that was the hue and cry over the movie,” Lehr said.
Test for progressives
“The Birth of a Nation” remains the elephant in the room for film history classes, which can’t very well ignore its significance. Meanwhile, the groundswell in 1915 to censor, ban and protest the movie was, and still is, a deeply uncomfortable litmus test for many progressives who decry bigotry, but are also pro-free expression under any and all circumstances.
In this case, the side claiming First Amendment rights was a wealthy film company on behalf of a hate-mongering film — while the side demanding censorship was a powerless, historically victimized minority that had good reason to worry the film would inspire violence against it.
Indeed, the worst fears of William Monroe Trotter, the editor whose crusading Boston-based African-American paper, The Guardian, led the charge against the film, were realized. On Nov. 25, 1915, the Ku Klux Klan — until then nearly extinct — came roaring back to life at Stone Mountain, Ga., citing “The Birth of a Nation” as inspiration. By 1926, the new Klan claimed 5 million members.
“It was amazing the impact the film had,” said USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham, co-founder of the Trotter Group, a 23-year-old society of black activist-journalists named in honor of the man who spearheaded the fight against Griffith’s film in 1915.
A century later, the war over “The Birth of a Nation” is echoed to some extent in the battle over “The Interview” (should a film be shown that could provoke attacks in theaters?) and the images in Charlie Hebdo (should cartoons be printed that goad fanatics to kill?). “The Birth of a Nation,” Wickham argues, should at least give pause to free-speech absolutists who insist that curbing free expression is never right under any circumstances.
“The strongest advocates for free speech are back-benchers,” Wickham said. “People so far removed from confrontation, it’s easy for them to make the case for unlimited free speech. There has to be some rational thinking here. You don’t have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater.”
Today, many still know of D.W. Griffith — the pioneering filmmaker who, even his critics will concede, was a genius who helped develop the “grammar” of the screen.
Fewer know about his opponent, Trotter. And that’s a shame, says Lehr, whose new book, “The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America’s Civil War,” attempts to adjust the scales. In some ways, the two men were mirror images: both self-promoters, both proud descendents of Civil War veterans (of opposing sides), both farsighted in their understanding of Hollywood’s power to stir emotion and mold belief. “Trotter was considered a radical for pushing direct protest actions, demanding voting rights, equal education,” Lehr said.
A time of change
“The Birth of a Nation,” Lehr points out, came along at a key, transitional moment in American race relations. The radical Frederick Douglassenergy of the post-Civil War period had given way, by the early 1900s, to a spirit of appeasement. Booker T. Washington, the black leader and power broker who urged accommodation, was assumed by many whites to speak for all African-Americans.
But impatience was in the wind. New black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and Trotter and new organizations like the NAACP were challenging the status quo. Times were urgent: Lynchings of black people had reached a crescendo in the 1890s (161 in 1892, according to figures from the Tuskegee Institute) and had little abated in the new century (106 in 1900).
It was in the midst of all this that Griffith released his mammoth film — a revelation to audiences used to the mostly crude fare of the early silent movie days. Griffith’s epic traced the fortunes of two families — one Northern, one Southern — torn apart by the Civil War, and even more by the later Reconstruction period, when (according to the movie) power-drunk African-Americans went on a rampage. Newly elected black officials are shown eating fried chicken and swilling whiskey in the Legislature, while ex-slaves push white Southerners off the sidewalk, and — in the film’s most notorious sequence — a lust-crazed “renegade mulatto” chases a virginal white woman who jumps off a cliff rather than submit.
Shocking today. Shocking to many then. But when Hollywood money men saw ticket buyers paying as much as $2 for a seat, at a time when typical movie admission was 5 cents, they realized the movies had arrived. “If you were going to ask what makes a film important, you might say it’s technically innovative, it made a huge pile of money, it had incredible cultural impact,” said film historian Richard Koszarski of Teaneck. “Ÿ‘Birth of a Nation’ has all three of those things.”
Editor moved to act
“The Birth of a Nation” was the last straw for Trotter. A proud intellectual (Harvard’s first black Phi Beta Kappa student) and a proud “race man,” Trotter was appalled, like many African-Americans, by Griffith’s film. And he was appalled that President Woodrow Wilson, whom he had rallied black voters to support, had screened “The Birth of a Nation” in the White House — the first film to be shown there.
Even worse, Wilson — the former New Jersey governor and Princeton University president — was said to have endorsed it with the remark that: “It is like writing history with lightning, and my one regret is it is all so terribly true.” Some historians think that apocryphal quotation was put into Wilson’s mouth by Thomas Dixon, an old classmate of Wilson’s, who wrote the novel “The Clansman” on which Griffith’s film was based. But at the time it appeared all too plausible to progressives, dismayed by Wilson’s record on Jim Crow (he introduced segregation to government offices in Washington, D.C.) and his apparent Southern sympathies.
Trotter rallied his forces. At his urging, Mayor James M. Curley of Boston held a three-day hearing (both Trotter and Griffith were present), but Trotter failed to get the mayor to ban the film. He then turned to Massachusetts Gov. David I. Walsh and the state Legislature, which made sympathetic noises but did nothing. Finally, Trotter led an opening-night protest in Boston. There were stink bombs lit in the theater, eggs thrown at the screen, scuffles with the police and arrests. Similar protests erupted in other cities. In the end, the film was banned in at least five states and several major cities.
It was the first shot in an African-American resistance movement that echoes into the 1960s and beyond. And “The Birth of a Nation” also spurred the first attempts by black filmmakers — most of them pitifully underfinanced and inexperienced — to reclaim their own story on screen. Films like “Within Our Gates” (1919) and “The Burden of Race” (1921) began a tradition that echoes down through the decades to Spike Lee, Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) and Ava DuVernay (“Selma”). That urgent need to regain control of the narrative is a continuing response to the argument “The Birth of a Nation” started, 100 years ago.
“Black filmmakers have been filming answers to ‘Birth of a Nation’ ever since the movie was released,” said film scholar Dennis Doros, co-owner of Milestone Films in Harrington Park.
High point for 2 men
In the end, “The Birth of a Nation” proved the high point in the careers of both Griffith and Trotter. The editor went into decline; in 1934 he died, a possible suicide. Griffith spent much of his career trying, in his way, to atone for “The Birth of a Nation.” In his World War I movie, “The Greatest Thing in Life” (1918), he showed a white soldier kissing his fallen black comrade in the trenches. His epic movie “Intolerance” (1916), his touching interracial romance, “Broken Blossoms” (1919), and his biopic “Abraham Lincoln” (1930), were arguably all nods to “The Birth of a Nation.”
Oddly, the Kentucky-born Griffith seems to have been, in most ways, a social progressive. A charitable analysis would be that when it came to the Civil War, he let his native biases cloud his judgment. Even Griffith, shortly before his death in 1948, conceded that “The Birth of a Nation” shouldn’t be shown in theaters. “The Negro race has had enough trouble,” he said.
“This is sort of like the original sin of American cinema,” Koszarski said. “American cinema is born with this film. But there’s a black mark on it from the beginning.”
Email: [email protected]" target="_blank
http://www.northjersey.com/news/a-paten ... -1.1266900
A patently offensive 'Birth of a Nation' turns 100
FEBRUARY 7, 2015, 11:52 PM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2015, 9:29 AM
BY JIM BECKERMAN
STAFF WRITER | THE RECORD
Today, Hollywood celebrates 100 years as a cultural force — all because of a film so embarrassing it can now barely be shown.
Civil War blockbuster “The Birth of a Nation,” released Feb. 8, 1915, gave new life to the Ku Klux Klan.
“The Birth of a Nation” had its sensational debut at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles a century ago today — Feb. 8, 1915. Ironically, just in time for Black History Month, if the 1926 observance had existed then.
Civil War blockbuster “The Birth of a Nation,” released Feb. 8, 1915, gave new life to the Ku Klux Klan.
The Civil War blockbuster “The Birth of a Nation,” released Feb. 8, 1915, gave new life to the KKK. By 1926, the Klan claimed 5 milion members.
It marked the birth of several other things as well: the birth of the movies as a big business and an art, the birth of the modern civil rights movement, the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and the birth of a debate about movie censorship that is as current as “The Interview.”
No one, back in 1915, had ever seen anything like D.W. Griffith’s Civil War blockbuster — with its sheer length (three hours), epic battle scenes, innovative use of tracking shots, cross-cutting and expressive close-ups. The climactic ride-to-the-rescue had audiences on their feet, wildly cheering and applauding.
Only thing, of course: The heroes riding to the rescue were the Ku Klux Klan (scored, in the original showings, to a live orchestra playing “Ride of the Valkyries,” an effect echoed 64 years later in “Apocalypse Now”). And the villains were African-Americans.
“The images are so blatant,” said Wartyna Davis, an associate dean at William Paterson University in Wayne, who has taught courses in African-American politics and popular culture and politics, and has screened excerpts from the film for her students.
Fools, upstarts, vicious rapists of white women: Those are just some of the black caricatures (many rendered by whites in blackface) that make “The Birth of a Nation,” today, a film to be more deplored than shown. “Clearly, this film is saying that black enfranchisement equals white subordination,” Davis said. “That still resonates in some political circles.”
And this is an offensive film, not just by the standards of our own time, but also for many back in 1915, when it spurred the mobilization of African-Americans as few things before or since.
“This movie was appalling to blacks in America,” said Dick Lehr, journalism professor at Boston University. It was, among other things, a huge recruitment tool for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, formed only six years earlier by a coalition of African-Americans and whites. “A very big part of that was the hue and cry over the movie,” Lehr said.
Test for progressives
“The Birth of a Nation” remains the elephant in the room for film history classes, which can’t very well ignore its significance. Meanwhile, the groundswell in 1915 to censor, ban and protest the movie was, and still is, a deeply uncomfortable litmus test for many progressives who decry bigotry, but are also pro-free expression under any and all circumstances.
In this case, the side claiming First Amendment rights was a wealthy film company on behalf of a hate-mongering film — while the side demanding censorship was a powerless, historically victimized minority that had good reason to worry the film would inspire violence against it.
Indeed, the worst fears of William Monroe Trotter, the editor whose crusading Boston-based African-American paper, The Guardian, led the charge against the film, were realized. On Nov. 25, 1915, the Ku Klux Klan — until then nearly extinct — came roaring back to life at Stone Mountain, Ga., citing “The Birth of a Nation” as inspiration. By 1926, the new Klan claimed 5 million members.
“It was amazing the impact the film had,” said USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham, co-founder of the Trotter Group, a 23-year-old society of black activist-journalists named in honor of the man who spearheaded the fight against Griffith’s film in 1915.
A century later, the war over “The Birth of a Nation” is echoed to some extent in the battle over “The Interview” (should a film be shown that could provoke attacks in theaters?) and the images in Charlie Hebdo (should cartoons be printed that goad fanatics to kill?). “The Birth of a Nation,” Wickham argues, should at least give pause to free-speech absolutists who insist that curbing free expression is never right under any circumstances.
“The strongest advocates for free speech are back-benchers,” Wickham said. “People so far removed from confrontation, it’s easy for them to make the case for unlimited free speech. There has to be some rational thinking here. You don’t have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater.”
Today, many still know of D.W. Griffith — the pioneering filmmaker who, even his critics will concede, was a genius who helped develop the “grammar” of the screen.
Fewer know about his opponent, Trotter. And that’s a shame, says Lehr, whose new book, “The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America’s Civil War,” attempts to adjust the scales. In some ways, the two men were mirror images: both self-promoters, both proud descendents of Civil War veterans (of opposing sides), both farsighted in their understanding of Hollywood’s power to stir emotion and mold belief. “Trotter was considered a radical for pushing direct protest actions, demanding voting rights, equal education,” Lehr said.
A time of change
“The Birth of a Nation,” Lehr points out, came along at a key, transitional moment in American race relations. The radical Frederick Douglassenergy of the post-Civil War period had given way, by the early 1900s, to a spirit of appeasement. Booker T. Washington, the black leader and power broker who urged accommodation, was assumed by many whites to speak for all African-Americans.
But impatience was in the wind. New black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and Trotter and new organizations like the NAACP were challenging the status quo. Times were urgent: Lynchings of black people had reached a crescendo in the 1890s (161 in 1892, according to figures from the Tuskegee Institute) and had little abated in the new century (106 in 1900).
It was in the midst of all this that Griffith released his mammoth film — a revelation to audiences used to the mostly crude fare of the early silent movie days. Griffith’s epic traced the fortunes of two families — one Northern, one Southern — torn apart by the Civil War, and even more by the later Reconstruction period, when (according to the movie) power-drunk African-Americans went on a rampage. Newly elected black officials are shown eating fried chicken and swilling whiskey in the Legislature, while ex-slaves push white Southerners off the sidewalk, and — in the film’s most notorious sequence — a lust-crazed “renegade mulatto” chases a virginal white woman who jumps off a cliff rather than submit.
Shocking today. Shocking to many then. But when Hollywood money men saw ticket buyers paying as much as $2 for a seat, at a time when typical movie admission was 5 cents, they realized the movies had arrived. “If you were going to ask what makes a film important, you might say it’s technically innovative, it made a huge pile of money, it had incredible cultural impact,” said film historian Richard Koszarski of Teaneck. “Ÿ‘Birth of a Nation’ has all three of those things.”
Editor moved to act
“The Birth of a Nation” was the last straw for Trotter. A proud intellectual (Harvard’s first black Phi Beta Kappa student) and a proud “race man,” Trotter was appalled, like many African-Americans, by Griffith’s film. And he was appalled that President Woodrow Wilson, whom he had rallied black voters to support, had screened “The Birth of a Nation” in the White House — the first film to be shown there.
Even worse, Wilson — the former New Jersey governor and Princeton University president — was said to have endorsed it with the remark that: “It is like writing history with lightning, and my one regret is it is all so terribly true.” Some historians think that apocryphal quotation was put into Wilson’s mouth by Thomas Dixon, an old classmate of Wilson’s, who wrote the novel “The Clansman” on which Griffith’s film was based. But at the time it appeared all too plausible to progressives, dismayed by Wilson’s record on Jim Crow (he introduced segregation to government offices in Washington, D.C.) and his apparent Southern sympathies.
Trotter rallied his forces. At his urging, Mayor James M. Curley of Boston held a three-day hearing (both Trotter and Griffith were present), but Trotter failed to get the mayor to ban the film. He then turned to Massachusetts Gov. David I. Walsh and the state Legislature, which made sympathetic noises but did nothing. Finally, Trotter led an opening-night protest in Boston. There were stink bombs lit in the theater, eggs thrown at the screen, scuffles with the police and arrests. Similar protests erupted in other cities. In the end, the film was banned in at least five states and several major cities.
It was the first shot in an African-American resistance movement that echoes into the 1960s and beyond. And “The Birth of a Nation” also spurred the first attempts by black filmmakers — most of them pitifully underfinanced and inexperienced — to reclaim their own story on screen. Films like “Within Our Gates” (1919) and “The Burden of Race” (1921) began a tradition that echoes down through the decades to Spike Lee, Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) and Ava DuVernay (“Selma”). That urgent need to regain control of the narrative is a continuing response to the argument “The Birth of a Nation” started, 100 years ago.
“Black filmmakers have been filming answers to ‘Birth of a Nation’ ever since the movie was released,” said film scholar Dennis Doros, co-owner of Milestone Films in Harrington Park.
High point for 2 men
In the end, “The Birth of a Nation” proved the high point in the careers of both Griffith and Trotter. The editor went into decline; in 1934 he died, a possible suicide. Griffith spent much of his career trying, in his way, to atone for “The Birth of a Nation.” In his World War I movie, “The Greatest Thing in Life” (1918), he showed a white soldier kissing his fallen black comrade in the trenches. His epic movie “Intolerance” (1916), his touching interracial romance, “Broken Blossoms” (1919), and his biopic “Abraham Lincoln” (1930), were arguably all nods to “The Birth of a Nation.”
Oddly, the Kentucky-born Griffith seems to have been, in most ways, a social progressive. A charitable analysis would be that when it came to the Civil War, he let his native biases cloud his judgment. Even Griffith, shortly before his death in 1948, conceded that “The Birth of a Nation” shouldn’t be shown in theaters. “The Negro race has had enough trouble,” he said.
“This is sort of like the original sin of American cinema,” Koszarski said. “American cinema is born with this film. But there’s a black mark on it from the beginning.”
Email: [email protected]" target="_blank
Dennis Doros
Milestone F&V
Milestone F&V
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Wm. Charles Morrow
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Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
Not so fast there! This past weekend I was reading a book written by John Wooley entitled Shot in Oklahoma: A Century of Sooner State Cinema, concerning movies filmed in that state. According to Mr. Wooley, a very short drama entitled The Wolf Hunt, filmed in 1908 by the Oklahoma Natural Mutoscene Company, drew the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. The film featured a man named John R. Abernathy who, it was said, could subdue a wolf with his bare hands, and did so for the cameras. According to Mr. Wooley, the film was shipped to the White House and shown by the President to a group of notables in February 1909, about a month before Roosevelt left office.misteranalog wrote: ALSO:
The Birth of a Nation was actually the second movie shown in the White House
Cabiria had been the first movie shown in the White House in 1914
In:
Mark Benbow
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 09/2010; 9(04):509 - 533
If this is true, then Cabiria was actually the second film shown in the White House, which also means that The Birth of a Nation comes in third.
-- Charlie Morrow
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KenGriffin
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Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
Meanwhile, the BBC asks 'Did this 100-year-old film make people racist?':
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31170282" target="_blank
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31170282" target="_blank
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
Enough with the racist crap already.
Ed Lorusso
DVD Producer/Writer/Historian
-------------
DVD Producer/Writer/Historian
-------------
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
Yes. Of course it did. People went into the theater loving others of all races and creeds and came out hating everyone else. And dogs.KenGriffin wrote:Meanwhile, the BBC asks 'Did this 100-year-old film make people racist?':
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31170282" target="_blank" target="_blank
Bob
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
— L.P. Hartley
— L.P. Hartley
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misteranalog
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- Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2013 9:32 am
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
As regards that 1908 movie, The Wolf Hunt, which actually involved coyotes, Theodore Roosevelt requested be made:
"Theodore also encouraged Jack to film a recreation of the wolf hunt which he did in 1908"
source : BudAndMe.com
To me this sounds like a vanity film, and the IMDB.com does not list any "release date" for it,
it may not have been commercially released, which to me means that it was not a real movie any more than a
home movie of a family's summer at the beach is a real movie, just a pet project of Theodore Roosevelt....
It is true that Roosevelt had this 14 minute movie shown at the White House, and as Commander-In-Chief, he also ordered that it be shown to the military:
"The movie was even shown at Annapolis and West Point to the cadets."
I don't think that the military did a lot of coyote hunting.....
Why not in movie theaters, unless it was never an actual commercial movie,
unlike both Cabiria and The Birth of a Nation, both of which had been in movie theaters well before being shown at the White House.
A movie created at Roosevelt's request, shown in the White House at Roosevelt's request and shown at military academies at Roosevelt's request seems to be in a different category than pre-existing commercial films which already had large public audiences.....
I seem to remember that Theodore Roosevelt went on a safari in Africa after leaving office and
got the best of a panther using only a knife.....
"Theodore also encouraged Jack to film a recreation of the wolf hunt which he did in 1908"
source : BudAndMe.com
To me this sounds like a vanity film, and the IMDB.com does not list any "release date" for it,
it may not have been commercially released, which to me means that it was not a real movie any more than a
home movie of a family's summer at the beach is a real movie, just a pet project of Theodore Roosevelt....
It is true that Roosevelt had this 14 minute movie shown at the White House, and as Commander-In-Chief, he also ordered that it be shown to the military:
"The movie was even shown at Annapolis and West Point to the cadets."
I don't think that the military did a lot of coyote hunting.....
Why not in movie theaters, unless it was never an actual commercial movie,
unlike both Cabiria and The Birth of a Nation, both of which had been in movie theaters well before being shown at the White House.
A movie created at Roosevelt's request, shown in the White House at Roosevelt's request and shown at military academies at Roosevelt's request seems to be in a different category than pre-existing commercial films which already had large public audiences.....
I seem to remember that Theodore Roosevelt went on a safari in Africa after leaving office and
got the best of a panther using only a knife.....
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
But the First Moving Picture Shown at The White House is just that.
-Craig
-Craig
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
https://dukeupress.wordpress.com/2015/0 ... esistance/
A very fine article on BIRTH OF A NATION by my friend Alyson Field, a professor at UCLA and the co-author on the LA Rebellion book and series.
A very fine article on BIRTH OF A NATION by my friend Alyson Field, a professor at UCLA and the co-author on the LA Rebellion book and series.
Dennis Doros
Milestone F&V
Milestone F&V
-
Brooksie
- Posts: 3984
- Joined: Wed Jun 30, 2010 6:41 pm
- Location: Portland, Oregon via Sydney, Australia
- Contact:
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
Of all the commentary around the 100th anniversary, the observation that really leapt out at me came from an article at Vulture.com - http://www.vulture.com/2015/02/why-we-a ... ovies.html:
This sums up my own feelings towards the film. Suppressing it does not change anything - not its message, not its undoubted technical and artistic achievement. It's a film that must be met head-on, its controversial elements confronted and interrogated rather than shoved into the shadows like some embarrassing family secret. Who knows - there may be some film or piece of literature that is considered fairly unremarkable today, but which people 100 years from now will hold up as a symbol of the unenlightened past. Plotting and recognising the transformation of attitudes over the course of a century is one way of ensuring we don't repeat them.My own thoughts on these questions involve a recollection of teaching Birth a few years ago to a class of bright undergraduates at a Southern university, as part of a survey course on the history of film. Aware that young viewers today are notoriously resistant to anything old, black-and-white, and (especially) silent, I was expecting yawns and annoyed fidgeting. Instead, the film — its hypnotic power intact after nearly a century — held the class riveted for three hours, few students even taking bathroom breaks. Afterward, I asked: Should this movie be shown today, in this class or anywhere? Some white students, shocked and embarrassed by the film, said it shouldn’t be shown, at all. African-American and Asian students, on the other hand, felt just the opposite, saying it must be seen — as widely as possible.
Brooksie At The Movies
http://brooksieatthemovies.weebly.com
http://brooksieatthemovies.weebly.com
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misteranalog
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Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
In 1908 , British naturalist Richard Kearton was invited to the white House to show multiple nature films he had made, the same year as the 1908 The Wolf Hunt, no months given for either.....
"President Roosevelt invited Mr. Kearton to show his pictures in the East Room of the White House [to]The members of the government's Biological Survey..."
The Technical World Magazine, Volume 16, page 521, 1911 [available on Google Books]
Theodore Roosevelt had a variety of interests, and it would not be in the least surprising had he
not arranged for short films on nature, The Panama Canal, boxing films.
military subjects, etc . to be shown when he was in office....
"President Roosevelt invited Mr. Kearton to show his pictures in the East Room of the White House [to]The members of the government's Biological Survey..."
The Technical World Magazine, Volume 16, page 521, 1911 [available on Google Books]
Theodore Roosevelt had a variety of interests, and it would not be in the least surprising had he
not arranged for short films on nature, The Panama Canal, boxing films.
military subjects, etc . to be shown when he was in office....
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misteranalog
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Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
In 1899, Biograph, under William Dickson, Edison's former assistant,
signed up William McKinley as a client, and filmed his public appearances.....
They also filmed the Pope's visit to the US in 1899, the Ope blessed their camera....
After McKinley died, Biograph signed up Theodore Roosevelt as a client to film his public appearances....
I'd be willing to bet that at least a few of the appearances that they filmed of both presidents
were shown to somebody in the White House, dates unknown......
signed up William McKinley as a client, and filmed his public appearances.....
They also filmed the Pope's visit to the US in 1899, the Ope blessed their camera....
After McKinley died, Biograph signed up Theodore Roosevelt as a client to film his public appearances....
I'd be willing to bet that at least a few of the appearances that they filmed of both presidents
were shown to somebody in the White House, dates unknown......
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silentfilm
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Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
BOAN is playing on C-SPAN on Saturday, February 14th.
Bruce Calvert
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Christopher Jacobs
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Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
C-SPAN!?! Do they ever run movies? Or are they telecasting a debate about the film just before or after? Hmm...silentfilm wrote:BOAN is playing on C-SPAN on Saturday, February 14th.
Anyway, I watched the Blu-ray for the 100th anniversary of the L.A. premiere and am already thinking I should re-watch at least the first half of it during March for the 100th anniversary of its New York premiere (though I'll likely get caught up enough to wind up watching the entire movie).
Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
And it's playing on C-SPAN on Valentine's Day. Feel the cognitive dissonance.Christopher Jacobs wrote:C-SPAN!?! Do they ever run movies? Or are they telecasting a debate about the film just before or after? Hmm...silentfilm wrote:BOAN is playing on C-SPAN on Saturday, February 14th.
Fred
"Who really cares?"
Jordan Peele, when asked what genre we should put his movies in.
http://www.nitanaldi.com"
http://www.facebook.com/NitaNaldiSilentVamp"
"Who really cares?"
Jordan Peele, when asked what genre we should put his movies in.
http://www.nitanaldi.com"
http://www.facebook.com/NitaNaldiSilentVamp"
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Harlett O'Dowd
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Re: 100th Anniversary of "The Birth of A Nation" on February
I've started re-watching it again this week and it's everything I remember it being - epic and impressive in its historical recreations with occasionally good acting along side emoting to the rafters and that jaw-dropping racism.
Knowing the risks involved (everyone, PELASE play nice) a question:
On my (don't laugh) laserdisc there's some odd framing issues (the image is askew in a few shots) with the beautifully tinted burning of Atlanta sequence. Is this inherent in the source material?
Knowing the risks involved (everyone, PELASE play nice) a question:
On my (don't laugh) laserdisc there's some odd framing issues (the image is askew in a few shots) with the beautifully tinted burning of Atlanta sequence. Is this inherent in the source material?