Latest in The Birth Of A Nation

Last night’s 60 Minutes segment on Nate Parker and The Birth of a Nation understandably was forced to lead with the filmmaker/star’s controversial 17-year old acquittal on rape charges and the suicide of his accuser 12 years later, but they really did leave some compelling historical stuff on the cutting-room floor…

Nate Parker, the embattled star-director-writer-producer of the Nat Turner slave-uprising drama The Birth of a Nation, appears on 60 Minutes in his first major network interview after Deadline revealed that a 17-year-old gang rape allegation would become a major issue for a film that seemed a prohibitive favorite for…

Tonight’s first debate faceoff between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is expected to draw Super Bowl-size ratings just as filmmakers continue to jump head-first into the political waters with all eyes focused on the November presidential election. Earlier this year, conservative gadfly Dinesh D’Souza — who beat doing…

A plethora of smaller theater chains and independent theaters, but none of the biggest exhibitors, joined Fox Searchlight Pictures in opening their lobbies to a voter registration drive associated with promotional screenings and the opening of The Birth Of  A Nation on October 7. Fox on Monday announced a roster of…

The premiere of The Birth is a Nation went off without a hitch – and without any protesters. Perhaps audiences – and Oscar voters – will decide that it should be judged on its own merits and not on the long ago allegation the film's director, Nate Parker, and story co-writer Jean McGianni Celestin, raped a fellow…

Never mind the cross-fire over a past rape charge against, and acquittal of, director-star Nate Parker; Fox Searchlight is turning up the heat under his film The Birth Of A Nation, with a high-powered guest list for its Los Angeles premiere at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on Wednesday. Atop the list, with Parker and…

When it comes to deliciously complicated back stories (and sideshows), movies don't get better than Fences, the soon-to-be Oscar contender based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson play starring and directed by Denzel Washington, with Scott Rudin among its producers. Back in 1987, Wilson's play was set up at Para…

On Monday morning, The Birth Of A Nation is gone from the Toronto Film Festival (at least until a last screening on Saturday), and there's finally time for somebody else's problems. Today’s Globe And Mail said the film is leaving as it arrived: with a question mark. A side-stepping press conference with star-director…

No apologies. Asked whether he should have apologized for a claimed sexual assault of which he was acquitted in 2001, Nate Parker told assembled reporters at the Toronto International Film Festival that this wasn't the time or place to deal with it. "This is a forum for the film," said Parker. "It is not mine, it does…

Not a question was asked, not a word was spoken about the old rape case, as Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation got a warm welcome — and a respectfully soft landing — at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday night. "What did Nat Turner's story mean to you?" Cameron Bailey, the festival's artistic director…

As the 41st Toronto Film Festival gets underway, Fox Searchlight executives and their allies are bracing, or should be, for what is almost sure to be the next great fight over their prize contender, Nate Parker's The Birth Of A Nation: The reality debate. Here's one way to frame the main question. Is Parker's film…

A week ago, Nate Parker’s The Birth Of A Nation conspicuously was left off the list of films getting a press conference at the Toronto Film Festival, though its distributor Fox Searchlight said Parker would be available for questions during a press junket. Today, the studio said as part of the press junket there will…