Actor and director Nate Parker received an enthusiastic welcome as his film The Birth of a Nation screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.
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The screening of Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation earned a standing ovation at the Toronto International Film Festival Sept. 9.
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.
“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 do want to make sure that we are honoring this film”.
Parker and his Birth of a Nation collaborator Jean Celestin were accused of allegedly sexually assaulting a fellow student at Penn University in 1999.
In 2001, Parker was acquitted; Celestin was convicted of sexual assault with a sentence of two to four years.
“Healing comes with an honest confrontation with our past”, Parker said Sunday, saying he didn’t want discussion of his own story to overshadow the movie.
What had Parker done so bad that would overshawdow his new film?
“As a woman, and as someone who believes strongly in social justice for everybody, it’s very upsetting to me when we have narratives that are so myopic and that exclude voices of women”, she said. Some in the Twitter community insist in humanist terms that bad people do not create good art. Others argue the opposing viewpoint, that an artist’s moral flaws should not silence the celebration of valuable work.
At Sunday’s press conference, she spoke of the broader themes addressed by the film and their modern-day relevance.
Someone asked me once, “What do you think the difference is between the civil-rights movement of old, and the current civil-rights movement?”
“I myself just learned that the young woman ended her own life several years ago and I am filled with profound sorrow”, he wrote. The accuser committed suicide in 2012 after many previous attempts.
Union talked about the response to her essay at a Toronto Film Festival Q&A panel for the film, reports the Cut. “I want to be a part of that”. “So I don’t want to hijack this with my personal life”.
Union brought it back to the movie and said, “It’s so important for people to see that you are not broken and you are not seen as damaged and you are not seen as less than or forsaken. This is the Nat Turner story”.
Fox Searchlight, the studio that bought the film for a Sundance record of $17.5 million, is a savvy awards season campaigner with a few recent best picture Oscars to its name.
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“Birth of a Nation” co-star Gabrielle Union has been outspoken about sexual violence throughout her career, and recently penned an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times where she said she was in a state of “stomach-churning confusion” surrounding the Parker allegations. “And I think it’s an important story to know about”.
