Fox Searchlight, Nate Parker Confront Old Sex Case That Could Tarnish ‘The Birth Of A Nation’

[Pretiacruento]

[b]Fox Searchlight, Nate Parker Confront Old Sex Case That Could Tarnish ‘The Birth Of A Nation’[/b]
Via [url=http://deadline.com/2016/08/nate-parker-sex-case-the-birth-of-a-nation-oscar-race-fox-searchlight-1201799115/]Deadline[/url]
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[quote][img]http://i.imgur.com/xlM0req.jpg[/img]

Since it swept the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prizes and sold in a stunning $17.5 million worldwide rights deal to Fox Searchlight at January’s Sundance Film Festival, Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation has been considered a front-runner film in the Oscar race. The wrenching, brutal depiction of the Nat Turner-led slave uprising in 1831 Virginia was a welcome respite from the outcry over a lack of diversity in Oscar nominees the past two years that haunted the Academy and led to sweeping overhauls. Who better to root for than Parker, an actor who, not satisfied to be considered a name on a casting director’s list, wrote his own second act and scripted, directed, produced and starred in a film considered every bit as powerful as 12 Years A Slave?

A brewing controversy threatens to challenge the trajectory of that inspiring narrative. Memories of 17-year-old rape charges waged against both Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin (who shares co-story credit with Parker) while they were roommates at Penn State in 1999 left Fox Searchlight in full crisis mode these past weeks, scrambling to figure out how best to protect its sizable investment and Oscar chances by getting in front of a disclosure that is bubbling up in the mainstream press. The transcripts of the trial are public record and readily available, as Deadline discovered — the clerk there offered that numerous inquiries have been made recently — and the play-by-play is a sordid he-said-she-said affair that pitted a female student against Parker and Celestin. She claimed both men had sex with her after she had passed out in their room following a night of drinking. They claimed the encounter was consensual. Traumatized, she subsequently dropped out of college, and attempted suicide, per court documents. Parker, who had an earlier mutually willing sexual encounter with the student, was acquitted of the charges. Celestin initially was convicted, but that was overturned on appeal and his case was not retried.

[Read the closing arguments of the prosecutor [url=https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/marshall-closing.pdf]here[/url] and the defense attorneys [url=https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/devecka-closing.pdf]here[/url] and [url=https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/lancaster-closing.pdf]here[/url].]

Why would an incident that ended in Parker’s acquittal nearly two decades ago be at all relevant in a movie that took place in Antebellum Virginia? It wouldn’t, if Parker — who studied management science and information systems with the intention of a career in IT, computer programming and management before he fell into acting — hadn’t remade his career to where he is on the cusp of being an A-list writer-director, and potential Oscar front-runner. Oscar history tells us there are no secrets during awards season. Having become fully aware of those old charges in the months since it bought the film, Fox Searchlight has been looking to pre-empt any late-season bombshells that might land while voters have ballots in hand. Also, one of the flash points for the uprising in The Birth of a Nation is the brutal rape of Turner’s wife Cherry, which strikes a match that flares into murderous rebellion against white slave-holders and the institutionalized cruelty that has never been exposed to this level in a major film.[/quote]
I suggest you read the whole thing.

[editline]13th August 2016[/editline]

Guess time will tell how all this ends up.

Also - this whole thing blew up in the first place, because for some reason, black people just can't deal with the fact that he's married to a white woman, a girl he met while they were attending Penn State.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/elD7q0o.jpg[/img]

So they started tearing him a new one, digging up dirt on him, until they found out about the old rape case, and here we are.

[Cranial Toxicity]

At first I thought this was talking about the original 1915 film, to which my response was something along the lines of -- "The Birth of a Nation is fucked up. In other news, water is wet."

[Pretiacruento]

[QUOTE=CAPT Opp4;50880172]At first I thought this was talking about the original 1915 film, to which my response was something along the lines of -- "The Birth of a Nation is fucked up. In other news, water is wet."[/QUOTE]

You mean, you weren't aware of this "reboot"? There's a trailer and everything :v:

[hd]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezWiUTXB11A[/hd]

[BBarnes005]

Why the fuck are they remaking Birth of a Nation. From what I understand the original essentially glorified the KKK and Segregation.

Oh the remake is about Nat Turner...but why the hell did they name it that?! But then again I guess most people nowadays don't even know what the original Birth of a Nation was or what it was about.

[Raidyr]

[QUOTE=Bbarnes005;50886918]Why the fuck are they remaking Birth of a Nation. From what I understand the original essentially glorified the KKK and Segregation.

Oh the remake is about Nat Turner...but why the hell did they name it that?! But then again I guess most people nowadays don't even know what the original Birth of a Nation was or what it was about.[/QUOTE]
Per [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation_(2016_film)#Title"]Wikipedia[/URL]
[QUOTE]He told the magazine Filmmaker, "Griffith's film relied heavily on racist propaganda to evoke fear and desperation as a tool to solidify white supremacy as the lifeblood of American sustenance. Not only did this film motivate the massive resurgence of the terror group the Ku Klux Klan and the carnage exacted against people of African descent, it served as the foundation of the film industry we know today. I've reclaimed this title and re-purposed it as a tool to challenge racism and white supremacy in America, to inspire a riotous disposition toward any and all injustice in this country (and abroad) and to promote the kind of honest confrontation that will galvanize our society toward healing and sustained systemic change."[/QUOTE]