Parker and his cast mates were in town for its global premiere at the Toronto worldwide Film Festival, and while the press conference was meant to highlight the forgotten legacy of African-American hero Nat Turner – and surely give it a marketing edge in the increasingly competitive and ever-lucrative awards-season race – industry watchers were only really interested in the event for one reason: Would Parker address his judicial history, which has been following his movie around like a toxic cloud since late August?
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On Saturday, a junket interview with CBC News was terminated when the reporter asked Parker whether Fox Searchlight had altered its strategy in the wake of the controversy.
“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.
The film’s director and star, 36-year-old Nate Parker, was applauded warmly as he introduced the film, which tells the true story of an 1831 slave uprising in Virginia, led by Nat Turner.
If the TIFF reception was any indication, The Birth of a Nation may still be in the running come awards season, a hope that dimmed when Parker’s past began to be re-examined last month by Hollywood industry media outlets.
“It’s a powerful film and it tells a hugely important story and the kind of story we don’t see often”, the festival’s artistic director Cameron Bailey said in an interview. So many hours put into it, so much love put into it. “This is the Nat Turner story”, said actress Penelope Ann Miller. “I was nowhere near that”, Glasner said.
During Sunday’s press conference, which was followed by a gala premiere of the film, Parker sought to separate his personal life and his past from the movie.
Gabrielle Union says the vast majority of people have been extremely supportive after she wrote an essay about her own rape. “It’s not mine at the moment”. “It is not mine, it does not belong to me”. “So I definitely don’t want to hijack this with my personal life”.
“I want to thank you for your time and for coming to see our film”.
“I think one of the handsome things we can all relate to Nate…. uh Nat…”, she stuttered during last night’s Q&A, “is that we’re all capable of evolution”. “I just want to honor this film and move it forward”. She herself was raped 24 years ago, and now plays a woman in the film who was raped and wants to talk openly about sexual violence. Parker was acquitted of the charges, while Celestin was convicted, but the verdict was later overturned.
Dressed in a black suit, Parker hopped out of a black auto on to the small red carpet outside a downtown Toronto movie theatre, where about five or six photographers had queued to snap the cast.
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TORONTO (AP) – Gabrielle Union feels the conversation that “Birth of a Nation” can create about race and sexual violence will have more impact than the controversy surrounding filmmaker Nate Parker. I was given five minutes.
