The Media Resources Center has licensed and digitized the Kino Video restored version of D.W. Griffith's epic film "Birth of a Nation" (1915).
The film, considered to be the first movie blockbuster, is an invaluable primary historical and cinematic resource. However much one may revile the racial and political sentiments revealed in the film, it represents an astounding achievement in the history of the movies.
Critic James Agee has written:
"He [Griffith] achieved with no other known man has ever achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art…"
as quoted in Rogin, Michael, "'The Sword Became a Flashing Vision': D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation." Representations, No. 9, Special Issue: American Culture Between the Civil War and World War I. (Winter, 1985), pp. 150-195.