Volume 19 Issue 50 | April 27 - May 3, 2007
A Downtown Express Special Supplement
Tribeca Film Festival 2007
Re-interpreting Birth of a Nation
Film historians have always had a difficult time dealing with D.W. Griffiths influential 1915 Birth of a Nation, singularly responsible for the development of long-form cinematic narrative, but also derided as profoundly racist and inflammatory. D.J. Spooky has taken the film and re-mixed it, breaking up its images, adding a score by the famed Kronos Quartet, and re-mixing the sounds and story to re-envision Birth of a Nation as something entirely new. Calling it Rebirth of a Nation, and saying he is re-claiming the racist work for the people it has wronged (he claims Birth of a Nation is still used today as a recruitment tool for the Ku Klux Klan), it is a live media experience rarely performed in New York. During the festival, it will be performed twice May 4 and 5 at 9 p.m. in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center. D.J.