Lillian gish3/30/2023 ![]() The cinema had been named after Gish and her sister Dorothy, who were born nearby, in 1976. It was because of Gish’s association, and the cinema’s prominent display of images from the film in the cinema foyer, that members of the Black Students Union at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University campaigned for the name change. For black American cinema to flourish, it may be necessary to confront and dismantle this revered text. With the rise of white supremacist groups in the US, the time has come to face Griffith’s film and interrogate its legacy. Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th and Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman both feature the film heavily, and there was a “white-face” version in Justin Simien’s Dear White People. The past few years have seen not just the release of Nate Parker’s slave uprising drama, which borrowed the older film’s name, but growing use of clips in releases by other directors of colour. While silent cinema scholars have questioned Griffith’s elevated status in film history, The Birth of a Nation has become more visible in popular cinema. Photograph: Library of Congress/Hulton Archive ‘Her legacy will survive’… Lillian Gish in a publicity picture from 1920. It was held responsible for a surge in KKK membership and has always had a toxic reputation, while being lauded for its technique. The movie, which prompted protests from the NAACP and cinema riots on its release, praises the Ku Klux Klan and contains deeply offensive representations of African Americans in the years following the civil war. The trustees of a student union in Ohio have voted unanimously to remove the name of Gish and her sister Dorothy from a university cinema because of one film that she appeared in, the notoriously racist The Birth of a Nation.ĭW Griffith’s 1915 film epic is still dangerous, perhaps increasingly so. But now, more than 25 years since her death aged 99, her stock appears to have fallen. ![]() ![]() She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an AFI Lifetime Achievement award and an honorary Oscar. L illian Gish, the “first lady of American cinema”, starred in more than 100 films between 19, including greats such as Broken Blossoms and The Night of the Hunter, and pioneered many of the techniques essential to cinema acting – especially mesmerising closeups. ![]()
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