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 The film about Nat Turner, a slave who led a rebellion in
Virginia in 1831, was once hailed as an awards front-runner but
has been overshadowed by headlines about a 17-year-old rape case
involving the writer, director, producer and lead actor, Nate
Parker, who was acquitted at a 2001 trial.
As Parker has sought to address the rape case in recent weeks,
marketing for the film has shifted to promote the relevancy of
the little-known story of Turner to today's Black Lives Matters
movement.
Television ads shown nationally interweave scenes of slaves
running through cotton fields in 1831 with recent news images of
protesters, with lips taped and "I Can't Breathe" signs,
demonstrating over the killings of unarmed black men by U.S.
police.
The stakes are high for studio Fox Searchlight, which bought the
movie in the midst of the controversy over lack of diversity in
Hollywood that prompted the resurgence earlier this year of #OscarsSoWhite.
But Parker, 36, said he knew right from the start that he wanted
to make a film that "changes the conversation around race in
this country."
"I feel like this country is more segregated now than it's been
in moments in the past, so seeing that a film is actually
speaking to that and progressing the conversation, it's
inspiring and encouraging," Parker told Reuters.
The film shares the same title as a 1915 movie, widely seen as
propaganda for white supremacy group Ku Klux Klan, but Parker's
version reclaims "Birth of a Nation" to show the brutality of
racism.
Disturbing visuals about race and slavery dominate "The Birth of
a Nation."
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 A white girl plays with a black girl with a noose around her
neck in one scene. In another, a family of slaves hang from the
branches of a sprawling live oak tree as Nina Simone sings
"Strange Fruit." In one of the most jarring scenes, a slave on a
hunger strike is force fed after having his teeth chiseled out
by his white owners.
"This was our reality and I think it's important that people
recognized that this was an everyday thing and a system that was so
strong and so fortified that it corrupted everyone that it touched,"
Parker said.
The cast hopes the film will supplement the teaching about slavery
in the United States.
"Slave rebellions happened and there's a weird sort of washing out
of this where I never heard about this story as a kid," said Armie
Hammer, who plays Turner's slave master.
Filmed in Savannah, Georgia, on the grounds of a real plantation,
the cast said they were emotionally affected by the history of the
land.
"You walk on that plantation and it's immediate, you feel our
people, you feel them like they're sitting right here, you see and
feel the pain. It's like a horror movie except this is reality,"
said Gabrielle Union.
(Editing by Leela de Kretser and Bill Rigby)
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