Cheers To Being UnStoppable, UnBreakable, and UnRelenting!
Nate Parker’s ‘The Birth Of A Nation’ was an instant hit at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and much of the talk of the town in the film industry after Fox Searchlight bought the rights for the film for a whopping $17.5 million dollars; the biggest sale in Sundance history.
Nate Parker reportedly spent more than seven years making this film a reality. The director, actor, and writer of film vowed to NOT act again until he completed this film. The film commemorates one of the biggest slave rebellion in history by Nat Turner. Parker put up $100,000 of his own money and every actor received the minimal union daily pay rate instead of huge salary payouts.
When asked about his passion for this particular story and the controversy surrounding the uprising of slave films, Parker who returned from a two-year acting hiatus responded:
” There’s A Resistance To Seeing Slave Stories Because We Sanitize History. …Slave Owners Were Part Of The Systematized Evil Encouraged Before The 13th Amendment Was Enacted “
Nate went on to say that he made the film in hopes that people will become ‘change agents’ to fight injustices in their own lives.
HuffingtonPost contributor, Mathew Jacobs writes:
‘Birth’ makes a refreshing statement about religion’s role in slavery. Owners citing scripture as justification for their brutality becomes the impetus for Nat’s two-day rebellion. While studying the Bible, he comes to a conclusion:
‘ For Every Verse They Use To Support Our Bondage, There’s Another One Demanding Our Freedom’
That sentiment inspires the uprising, creating a profound statement about the ills of abusing religion in the name of wrongdoing. Some things haven’t changed…. In the movie’s most powerful scene, the sounds of Nina Simone’s “Strange Fruit” brought the Sundance audience to tears as Elliot Davis’ camera panned across series of black men hanging from trees.
Needless to say, Parker brought the heat to Salt Lake City, Utah this week, and he has decided to ink the deal with Fox. Talk about the right antidote for the controversial #OscarsSoWhite awards.
” I Keep Saying, We’ve Won Already. The Movie Exists, We Contributed To It As A Family, It Belongs To Us. Everything That Comes After This Is Bonus . “
Spotted celebrities at this year’s event thus far are Kerry Washington, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Lena Dunham, Spike Lee, Malinda Williams Erykah Badu, James Harris, Kristen Harris and Gabrielle Union who plays alongside Turner in ‘Birth’ of what many are calling an ‘unrecognizable’ woman in the film.
About The Sundance Film Festival:
The Sundance Film Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Life Itself, The Cove, The End of the Tour, Blackfish, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Super Size Me, Dope, Little Miss Sunshine, sex, lies, and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious and Napoleon Dynamite.
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, and new media to create and thrive. The Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences to artists in igniting new ideas, discovering original voices, and building a community dedicated to independent storytelling.
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