Cinema's Original Sin

Paul McEwan is a professor in the Media and Communication and Film Studies Departments at Muhlenberg College. He is the author of Bruce McDonald's Hard Core Logo and The Birth of a Nation (BFI Classics).

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. A New Art, 1895–19152. Film Art, Intolerance, and Oscar Micheaux, 1915–19253. Little Theatres, MOMA, and the Birth of Art Cinema, 1925–19454. From American History to Film History, 1945–19605. In Search of Legitimacy and Masterpieces: Film Studies in the Academy, 1960–20006. Race, Reception, and Remix in the New MillenniumEpilogueNotesIndex

Cinema’s Original Sin is a fascinating, authoritative, and essential text for anyone interested in film history, the history of racism and its on-going echoes, or examining the history of ongoing social conversations from the public, press, and academia...The Birth of a Nation is not a masterpiece. It’s well-executed propaganda. It’s time to call that out and acknowledge it, which Professor McEwan definitively does with flawless scholarship and inarguable logic. It’s an essential read and an essential contribution to numerous on-going cultural conversations. (Mastering Modernity) Few films in the history of the medium have been as widely discussed as D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation...Yet it is this very excess of existing commentary that makes Paul McEwan’s contribution in the form of Cinema’s Original Sin so worthwhile and, ultimately, compelling...Tracing a long and contentious reception history that begins before cinema’s widespread acceptance as an art in its own right, McEwan delineates with rare authority how changing ideas about racism, artistic expression and film culture have been intertwined since the very earliest years of feature filmmaking in the United States. (Early Popular Visual Culture) Alongside the history McEwan keeps track of how film criticism might contribute to and ameliorate the contours of white supremacy-film criticism that includes his book and now this little review. (CHOICE) McEwan presents an enchanting and well-researched historical past . . . and argues that this controversy inside movie historical past has formed understandings of movie, race, and artwork. (Hetflix) Cinema’s Original Sin is expansive, particularly for students who think of racism and the cinema solely in terms of representational strategies. Once it becomes clear that the issue is structural, adjusting representational strategies appears an insufficient solution to the issues that led-and in some instances continue to lead-to Griffith’s defense. (Film Quarterly)