kellee's blog

via NPR

Weekend Edition Sunday, Oct 17, 2004.

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."

Find related links,interviews, and footage of the remix at NPR's report.