Birth of A Nation

In the midst of Reconstruction, a time of terror and trouble looming in the South, "the love strain is still heard above the land's miserere." In an outdoor love scene in a pine forest, Ben and Elsie kiss, and he presents her with a "love token" - a white dove. (Silas Lynch spies on them, watching Elsie.) But the defeated South cannot easily forget: "bitter memories will not allow the poor bruised heart of the …

…and forever!" The Birth of a Nation: Does it refer to the re-established 'united' states, or to the "birth" of the Invisible Empire - the Ku Klux Klan? The film is many things: repulsive, naive, biased, simplistic, historically inaccurate, and astonishing in its view of history and racist glorification of the KKK. Yet it is also a tremendously significant and powerful work of art (and example of movie propaganda), with extraordinary effects and brilliantly-filmed sequences.