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DJ Spooky, Recasting 'Birth of a Nation'
Paul Miller, a.ka. DJ Spooky
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Paul D. Miller, also known as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, has taken his talents remixing sound and music for the club scene, and applied them to a new medium: film.
He's been touring the world presenting D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation as a video remix called "Rebirth of a Nation."
The film, based on a 1905 novel called The Clansman, was a breakthrough in the early days of cinema, but its racist subject matter and crude stereotypes earned Griffith much scorn.
"In a certain sense what I'm doing is portraying the film as he intended it," DJ Spooky says of his remix. "This is a film glorifying a horrible situation. And I think a modern sensibility is something where people will look at this and go like 'Oh, I can't believe this, I don't relate to it, I don't think this is right, what does he mean?' So it's not letting him off the hook so much as presenting the film and actually having it fall in on itself."
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