The Birth of a Nation - A 1915 Film Directed by D. W. Griffith- run time 3 hours and seven minutes- A Silent Film

Certainly "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old minstrel show or a vile comic pamphlet." - Roger Ebert

"He achieved what no other known man has 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: and to realize that this is all the work of one man." James Agee 

 The Birth of a Nation is an amazing movie, a work of art that embodies horrible values.  It supports  completely racist stereotypes of formerly enslaved persons and portrays the Klu Kluz Clan as devoted to returning the post civil war American South back to the control of white people. White actors in blackface portrayed ex- slaves.

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The film is a highly racist and pro-Ku Klux Klan depiction of the Reconstruction Era in the United States. It was a critical and commercial success, and is considered one of the most influential films ever made.
The film is set during the Reconstruction Era in the United States, following the Civil War.

The film tells the story of two families, the Camerons (who are white) and the Stonemans (who are white and Northern).

The film portrays the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic organization that protects white people from black violence.  The south is depicted as ruled by northern carpetbaggers using freed slaves as front men. The greatest horror to southern whites was intermarriage.

The film was a critical and commercial success, and is considered one of the most influential films ever made.