The Birth of a Nation

– Lights, camera, action!

Legend has it that D.W. Griffith was the first to utter these words—on the set of a film initially titled The Clansman. To make it, he risked his reputation, his career, and the vast sums of money he had raised from investors. For the battle scenes, he hired Civil War veterans who had fought in the conflicts recreated on screen. He enlisted hundreds of extras and directed through a megaphone from a 15-meter-high tower. Pyrotechnicians produced smoke and sparks from gunfire. No one before Griffith had ever presented the world with such a spectacle—full of blood, fires, women throwing themselves into the abyss, and horsemen charging straight at the audience. The screening left audiences spellbound. Inspired by the audience’s euphoria, Griffith changed the title to The Birth of a Nation.

His blatantly racist masterpiece tells of the alleged threat posed by freed Black people and of brave knights fighting the barbarism of former slaves. Why watch this film today? To see the first Hollywood blockbuster in history, and the blockbuster that led to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

Maciej Jarkowiec

David Wark Griffith (1875–1948) – American director born in Kentucky. As the son of a Confederate colonel, heroic war stories and southern mythology accompanied Griffith until he left the family home at age 22. Initially seeking work in theater without much success, he joined the film industry. In 1908–1913, Griffith made over 450 short films for Biograph. Gradually extending the length of his films, he parted ways with Biograph and made the watershed The Birth of a Nation (1915) with his own production company, turning it into his biggest box-office success. Beginning with the monumental Intolerance (1916), his films’ receipts began declining, and, after a series of failures in the 1920s, he quit filmmaking in 1931.

1st American Film Festival Catalogue