everything that d.w. griffith has learned about cinematic grammar he throws into this film. it is an astonishing work. it's full of amazing storytelling techniques, terrific acting, beautiful editing. it is truly one of the most important films in the history of the evolution of narrative cinema. unfortunately, it is also one of the vilest racial tracks in the history of american cinema. so griffith was an unreconstructed racist who had very, to be kind, paternalistic attitude towards african-americans. so "birth of a nation" is the story of the civil war and reconstruction based on a novel by a man called thomas dixon called "the clansman." it tells the story of families torn asunder by the civil war. and the portrayal of southerners in the film is very, very sympathetic, including the fact that the rescue at the end of the film is effected by the ku klux klan. so this is a film that is very difficult to watch out of context. people who see it today, people who come to it fresh without knowing the background, without knowing the era, find it a very difficult film to deal wi

griffith were actually shot overseas during the war. but there's just a tremendous amount of actuality footage, a little bit of it. there's some battlefield footage. there's others of political leaders, leaders of all the major countries that were involved in world war i, films of bond rallies which, of course, were hosted by very popular stars like mary pick ford, charlie chaplain, douglas fairbanks. so there's a fair amount of coverage of world war i in our collection as well. much of that world war i footage is known to researchers. we've long had a good finding aid to all of our world war i-related material that's available in the reading room. so scholars have been able to get access to it. but most of that footage we have is in the public domain. so now that we have these digital tools available to us, it makes for good access copies. we're going to preserve the films, we want to make sure the films themselves are preserved and, you know, stored in cold storage so they last for a long time. but digitalization is such a great acces