This three-channel video installation by James Benning shows three scenes from David Wark Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The two-minute-long screen arrangement of imperceptibly moving images alludes to the beginning of racism. The three screens each show a solider in the American Civil War, black slaves picking cotton in the field, and imposing KKK.

* This film is only screened at the Expanded Plus.

James Benning re-contextualizes the three scenes from D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, through the three-channel installation. The silent epic drama from 1915 tells the impact of the Civil War on two families who shared deep friendship - the Southern Camerons and the Northern Stoneman. Three screens juxtapose a soldier fallen down in the battlefield, black cotton farmers and a white couple taking a walk shot deep in depth, and the Ku Klux Klan on a march to remove the black people.