The Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation (1915) is D.W. Griffith's silent historical epic, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Running past three hours, it follows two families — the Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons — across the Civil War and the years that came after.

Friendships and courtships bend under the war. The Cameron son Ben is taken prisoner, and nurse Elsie Stoneman, played by Lillian Gish, pleads for his release. The second half moves into the Reconstruction South, where Griffith openly glorifies the Ku Klux Klan and renders its Black characters through ugly racist caricature. That bias is not background noise; it is the film's argument, and it drew protests the year it opened.

People study it now as two things at once. One is a leap in film grammar — cross-cutting, close-ups and huge battle staging that shaped how Hollywood would tell stories for decades. The other is hateful propaganda that helped revive the Klan in real life. Approaching it without that context does the history a disservice. Best suited to anyone learning how cinema and its abuses developed. Stream The Birth of a Nation (1915) online on iFILM.