Premiere in Los Angeles -- Thomas Dixon, Jr. -- David Wark Griffith -- Making The birth of a nation -- Transforming the American movie audience -- Fighting a vicious film -- Griffith's view of history ...

While “The Birth of a Nation,” one of the most controversial films of the 20th century, was the talk of the town in 1916 in Rochester, at least one sober voice tried to connect movie-goers with ...

The surprisingly relaxed, unhistrionic body language of the stars playing the two sets of family members establishes sympathies early on, so that Griffith's wide shots of real artillery firing on ...

Before his Ku Klux Klan-promoting film “Birth of a Nation” (1915), D.W. Griffith codified Mexican characters and themes that persist today. The reprobate father. The saintly mother. The wayward son.