Nate Parker, director and star of forthcoming film “The Birth of a Nation”, has come under fire ahead of the Toronto International Film Festival.
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TORONTO “The Birth of a Nation” director Nate Parker and his cast are playing challenging parts this weekend as they try to keep the spotlight trained on their acclaimed slavery drama while acknowledging concern about a rape case involving Parker. “I definitely don’t want to hijack this with my personal life”.
Film lovers and industry insiders have been waiting with bated breath to see how The Birth of a Nation would go over at the Toronto Film Festival.
A 17-year-old rape allegation against Parker and his co-writer Jean Celestin while they were students at Penn State University has loomed in the headlines and threatened to overshadow the film. Parker was found not guilty; Celestin was convicted and sentenced to six months in prisons, but appealed and was granted a new trial in 2005.
A week after that piece, Parker addressed the accusation in a Facebook post, in which he stressed his innocence and confessed that he didn’t know that his alleged victim had committed suicide. The American Film Institute, a national organization dedicated to cinema heritage, abruptly canceled a screening scheduled for late August, and Oscar insiders are buzzing that the film is effectively out of competition. Several Academy members previously told The Hollywood Reporter that they would not see the film, much less vote for it, on principal. The story has taken over the success the film has had at festivals since sweeping the major awards at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. “I do want to make sure we are honoring this film”. Over 400 people were involved in the making this film. So many people are away from their families and working on the film…
“This story has never really been told”, said Boone, who portrays Rev. Walthall in the film. Glasner asks. Then, one of Parker’s handlers speaks up in the background, saying “Thanks, Eli, we’re gonna wrap up”. “It’s going to be a lot of uncomfortable, awkward, heated conversations, but that’s the only way we can hope to have evolution and hope to have behavioural shifts, which is what Nat Turner [the main character in Birth of a Nation] was all about”. People are trying to legislate bathroom use… this movie is for you as well. “When I look at Nat Turner, I look at someone that sacrificed for a future he couldn’t enjoy”, Parker said.
“This is a forum for the film and for the other people sitting on this stage”.
Parker’s cause was bolstered by cast members who urged those intent on boycotting the film to separate the art from the artist. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and as we move forward with this film, we want to deal with injustice everywhere, wherever it stands”.
Union also wrote that while she doesn’t know what happened in Parker’s case, she saw the film as “an opportunity to inform and educate so that these situations cease to occur”.
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“As important and ground-breaking as this film is, I can not take these allegations lightly”, she wrote.
