The Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods and produced the film with Harry Aitken. The Birth of a Nation is a landmark of film history, lauded for its technical virtuosity. It was the first non-serial American 12-reel film ever made. Its plot, part fiction and part history, chronicles the relationship of two families in the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras over the course of several years—the pro-Union (Northern) Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy (Southern) Camerons, and also depicts the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth.

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