Thursday, January 28, 2016

New Film---Birth Of A Nation Repurposed In An Age Of Terror With Nat Turner as Lead

Birth of A Nation [2016] is a cinematic retelling of  American History.  Its source is Nat Turner's Confessions of Nat Turner written in 1831  in which 60+ white men, women and infants are slaughtered in an 1831 Virginia slave rebellion and about 150+ slaves are victims of revenge. 

Coming during a presidential campaign season and well appreciated by those attending the Sundance Film Festival will . . .  well at this point I can't really imagine.   

I wonder if Turner's Confessions, which was a transcription of Turner's interviews to his white defense attorney and William Styron's novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner [1967] will even vaguely considered in the discussion of the film. I have read Styron's novel and have assigned Nat Turner's Confessions. As one of the characters in True Detective Season 2 says of journalists "They would rather be first and wrong than be second and right."

Birth of a Nation [2016]

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