In what must be one of the ballsiest moves in recent memory (or the sign of an imminemt implosion in the Turner/Time Warner world) Turner Classic Movies are showing the “classic” Birth of a Nation film tonight at 8pm as part of their Race & Hollywood series…
Sure they sugar coat it in the description.
Families from the North and the South fight to survive the Civil War and its aftermath.
But everyone knows it’s quite possibly the most notorious movie ever made… Put it this way, after being inspired by the movie, a group of Atlanta men climbed Stone Mountain one night and reconstituted the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan also used it as a recruiting tool.
The funniest part of it is, the Race & Hollywood series is 37 movies ranging from Birth of a Nation through to Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus. Turner originally wanted it to be 38 movies by adding in Disney’s Song of the South, but the studio has withdrawn it from exhibition, apparently Disney doesn’t want to acknowledge it ever made that movie.