Just look at that poster. Our hero everybody!
Wind the clocks back almost a whole century, to 1915. Film was the new thing, a cheap sideshow type attraction, with studios pumping out hundreds of movies a year, selling tickets for 5c at nickelodeons. The films were only about 20 minutes long, and no one would really call them high art yet, but there was one director that had a vision.
D.W. Griffith is considered the great pioneer of filmmaking. His techniques were not new or ground-breaking - but their implementation at his hands was marvellous. Audiences were blown away by his ability to juxtapose two scenes in editing - creating the sense of two things happening simultaneously in different places. They had never experienced a camera that moved at the same speed as the horse it was following; the thrill was spectacular. All these and more Griffith utilized in creating what is arguably his greatest film - certainly his best known: the 3-hour epic that is Birth Of A Nation.
