Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062452
DGA QUARTERLY 67 Griffith's 1915 film Birth of a Nation as inspiration. The Klan, which had lain dormant since the 1880s, was catastrophically revived by the pic- ture's blockbuster success. Lynching became commonplace for the next half-century. Griffith's film opened in February of 1915: The following May, a mentally impaired man named Jesse Washington was castrated, dismembered and burned alive as he was hanged. This horror was photographed in detail. At the film's climax, Harry Belafonte's character shares these images with young students of color during a packed lecture. Lee closes with documentary images from the 2017 riots in Charlottes- ville, VA, where white supremacists led by the real-life David Duke, played in Lee's film by Topher Grace, rally so violently that Heather Heyer, a young woman who was part of an opposing peace demon- stration, is murdered before our eyes. "Charlottesville happened just before we commenced princi- pal photography," says Lee. "When I saw that stuff, I knew David Duke, neo-Nazis, alt-right and the KKK had written the coda for staying alive, and how you relate to police officers." Starr's childhood sweetheart Khalil (Algee Smith) has grown up without a father, and so has not received "the talk." He is shot to death by a panic-stricken white policeman, and Starr, who witnesses this, must find the courage to testify even if it means sacrificing her anonymity. This conflict, between self-preservation in a world of homogeneity by concealing one's roots and political beliefs, and that of speaking out against injustice by rocking the boat, acts as a throughline between the films of Tillman, Lee and Jenkins. Those Who Ignore the Past… S H E D I D I N Malcolm X, which opens with Los Angeles police beating Rodney King, Lee creates with BlacKkKlansman an energetic sense of our present historic context by bookending his film with actual news footage and archival movie clips. BlacKkKlansman, based on a true story about two detectives— one black, one white—who infiltrate a Colorado chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, opens with Alec Baldwin as a white supremacist spew- ing venom to like-minded recruits, who are soon treated to D.W. From left: Spike Lee guides leading man John David Washington on the set of BlacKkKlansman; actor KiKi Layne and Barry Jenkins confer on If Beale Street Could Talk; George Tillman Jr. calls the shots on The Hate U Give. As recent films by Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins and George Tillman Jr. have shown us, the fissures of the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s continue to spread, providing dramatic fuel for their unique visions By F.X. Feeney A