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B&W and Color Photographs & Illustrations; CONTENT WARNING: This description includes information about The Civil War South, The Klu Klux Klan, racial depictions of African Americans, suicide, and a host of other delicate topics dealing with the United States before and during Reconstruction. The Birth of a Nation - a controversial film from before it became a film, was based, for the most part, on the play The Clansman, which was adapted by Thomas Dixon, Jr. From his own novel: The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, published 1905 (Doubleday, Page & Company, 374p. ) , The Clansman was part of a trilogy that chronicled the US Civil War and Reconstruction. The Birth of a Nation - a controversial film from before it became a film, was based, for the most part, on the play The Clansman, which was adapted by Thomas Dixon, Jr. From his own novel: The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, published 1905 (Doubleday, Page & Company, 374p. ) , The Clansman was part of a trilogy that chronicled the US Civil War and Reconstruction. After several years success with the best-selling book and his adaptation into a play, the author, Dixon, met with several studios, and finally came to an agreement with D. W. Griffith (a fellow southerner) who, along with Frank E. Woods adapted the play into a screenplay which was produced by Harry Aitken. Shooting started July 1914 and the finished product was publicly shown January 1 & 2 of 1915 in Riverside, CA. While the content of the film was highly controversial, the film itself was a "landmark" in film technology for the period. *It was the first American 12-reel film ever made *It was the longest film to that point, running at three hours, which was broken into two parts, with an intermission between. *It was the first American made film to have a musical score for an Orchestra*It pioneered closeups and fadeouts, and included staged battle scenes *It used hundreds of extras (made to look like thousands) *It was the first motion picture to be screened inside the White House (for Pres. Woodrow Wilson) *It was a huge commercial success, with a larger gross than any previous motion picture to that point in time (until being overtaken by another film of the Civil War South - Gone with the Wind) Of course, it is the content of the film that brought controversy. The movie details the drama of the Civil War from both sides: The Camerons' of South Carolina, and The Stonemans' of the North (Pennsylvania). The main characters are loosely based on actual politicians and their families during the Civil War. The movie is broken into two halves with the first half dealing with the early years of the war, shown by sons from both families entering the military, and continues through battles, capture of the southern son by the North, his death sentence and clemency, and through the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The second half of the film shows how the North forgoes Lincoln's policy of conciliation and begins the "so-called" punishment of the south by Radical Republicans in their era of Reconstruction. In this half of the film, the author (and the director) shows his mostly Southern viewpoint of how Reconstruction is decimating the white man by promoting blacks through terror and racial mixing. It's during this time that the son of the Southern Camerons, Ben, begins the reformation of the Ku Klux Klan to preserve the white way of life through white supremacy. Throughout this half of the movie blacks are shown as brutish, stupid, and, sexually aggressive (especially towards white women). The plot is livened by relationships between both the younger generations of Camerons and the Stonemans, while also given tinges of suspense, adventure and thriller, through actions of the two families and interactions between the families and the people around them. The reaction by the public to the film was as oversized as the movie was. This group of items was collected by a teacher and u. Seller Inventory # A44345
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