RECLAIMING A NATION
IN 1915, the cinematically groundbreaking and wildly racist film The Birth of a Nation ignited the reformation of the Ku Klux Klan and earned the distinction of becoming the first domestic film shown at the White House. A century later, as KKK and American Nazi Party leaders endorse Donald Trump’s presidential bid, The Birth of a Nation returns. The film, which screens at the Toronto International Film Festival, explores the real-life Nat Turnerled 19th century slave rebellion. It’s helmed by African-American director-writer-star Nate Parker, significant given the last person to tell Turner’s tale was white writer William Styron in the controversial, stereotype-laden 1967 novel The Confessions of Nat Turner. By contrast this film both reclaims Turner’s story as well as the title of one of the most hateful films ever made, in the vein of comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who reclaimed the N-word by making it the title of his 1964 autobiography. That said, revelations of Parker’s 2001 rape charge, of which he was acquitted – the woman who accused him committed suicide in 2012 – threaten to usurp the film’s headlines.
And for fans of blockbuster books-turned-movies, American Pastoral is a 1960s tale of an extreme political act based on Philip Roth’s novel, Denial is the true story of a 1996 court battle to prove the existence of the Holocaust, which makes its world premiere at TIFF, The Girl on the Train is based on the hugely successful 2015 tome and Tom Hanks is back in another Dan Brown flick, Inferno.