Director Nate Parker and the cast of The Birth Of A Nation have argued passionately for focusing on their film and not on the years-old rape allegation against Parker that has enveloped the movie in a scandal.
Advertisement
“My hope is that we can recognize that films are very hard to be made, and then furthermore, that this film is hopefully more than a film, that it’s an opportunity to be parlayed into a movement that we can look at this and say, ‘Yeah there was the film, but after the film I had this conversation, ‘” Parker said.
“I want to thank you for your time and for coming to see our film”, he said, according to People magazine.
Despite his refusal to discuss his own hard history, for which he was charged with raping a fellow Penn State University student but later acquitted at trial – his roommate and Birth of a Nation co-writer Jean Celestin was found guilty but acquitted upon appeal – Parker urged everyone to have “honest conversation” about oppression and wounds of all kinds.
Parker was acquitted of the charges, but his friend, Jean Celestin, who shares a story credit on The Birth of a Nation, was found guilty. As Nat witnesses the violence done to his people as well as the personal injustices inflicted on his beloved wife Cherry (Aja Naomi King), his resentment builds, and he begins to see the Bible not as an instrument of peace but as a weapon to lead an army.
The Pianist is one of my favorite films, but just because it was the creation of Polanski, someone who has done a despicable crime, does not mean I am going to love the movie any less. He responded, “I’ve addressed this a few times, and I’m sure I’ll address it in different forums”.
The topic was also absent from a cast and crew Q&A after the screening, which included Parker’s co-star Gabrielle Union, who wrote recently of her “stomach-churning confusion” upon learning about the 1999 case.
“If you are wondering about Colin Kaepernick and his stand for equality and if he’s on the right side of history”, she said, “there’s nothing more patriotic than resistance”. Prior to its Toronto debut, she penned an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, in which she wrote: “As important and ground-breaking as this film is, I can not take these allegations lightly”.
“The Birth of a Nation” first debuted in January at the Sundance Film Festival at the same time the “OscarsSoWhite” backlash was raging. In retrospect, it feels like a pre-emptive answer to a question that schoolchildren will inevitably ask: “Why did slaves allow their enslavement to continue?” On Friday night, two high-profile Toronto screenings had the celebratory and self-confirming air of many well-received Oscar contenders; despite a month of intense online conversation about the Parker allegations, the rooms greeted the films as if nothing had happened. “You know, after the film I talked to my kids and said, ‘You know what son, or daughter, this is how you should move forward, or this is what this type of integrity looks like when it comes to standing up for people around you'”. Parker simply said that he would stick to making films that address wrongs in the big sense.
“I don’t want to hijack this with my personal life”.
During the hour-long press conference, Parker said he had “talked extensively” with Union.
Advertisement
In a medium over-saturated with films of little substance, that come and go with a stench of boredom, it’s always nice to see a picture like The Birth of a Nation pop up and leave the world breathless. “I do think it’s important to recognize that no one person does anything important on their own”. “That movement includes the people who fight back against sexual violence”.
