BATTLE CRY!
Slave-uprising film a hit amid Oscar furor
AN INDEPENDENT drama about the doomed 1831 rebellion by Virginia slave Nat Turner arrived at just the right time in cinematic history — and the film’s writer/director/star is ready for an uprising of a less violent kind.
“The Birth of a Nation,” Nate Parker’s statement on the black experience in America, scored loud cheers and a bidding war among distributors at its premiere last week in Park City, Utah.
Fox Searchlight moved quickly to pay a Sundance record $17.5 million to buy the film, which went on to capture the two highest honors for drama at the Sundance Film Festival Saturday — the Audience Award and the Grand Jury prize.
“Thank you Lord, thank you Sundance,” Parker said onstage at the Basin Recreation Field House in Park City. “I’ve seen first-hand that people are open to the idea of change, and the fact that this is happening means everything to me.”
The film debuted amid outrage over the Academy Awards in which not a single person of color was nominated for an acting Oscar for a second straight year.
That moment comes just a month before the Feb.Feb 28 Oscars,Oscars with much of the attention focused on the lack of diversity on both sides of the camera and in the boardrooms of the film industry.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences — the body that runs the awards — has pledged major changes in its membership process, but a real beachhead toward more inclusion must come from filmmakers like Parker.
“I want people to see this film and to talk about challenging systems that were oppressive,” Parker told the Daily News prior to winning his awards. “If there were to be awards in the future, but there were no change in the landscape when it came to em- bracing and celebrating diversity of culture, then I failed.”
The title of the movie is also no accident — it’s a defiant co-opting of director D.W. Griffith’s infamous 1915 epic, “The Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and vilified blacks.
“In taking this title, I wanted to reclaim it as a filmmaker, I wanted to reclaim it as a man of African descent, I reclaim it as an American,” said Parker. “What Griffith said was wrong.”
Of course for most of the seven years it took to cobble together the film’s $10 million budget, it was a tough hero’s journey to get it to the screen.
The work had two strikes going against it for investors as a period drama about slavery without a majorj white star in the lead role to woo international markets.
“Let’s just say the pitch as I pushed this boulder up the hill was nearly 90 degrees,” said Parker.
“Birth of a Nation” may not earn close to the box office returns of a “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” when it’s eventually released to the wider public, but Parker’s ambitions are no less grand.
“This will be the birth of a new nation of individuals that’s standing against anything that is suggestive or that is supportive or that perpetuates white supremacy and racism in America,” he said.