I have to go with Doc on this one. BoaN was unabashedly racist and bigoted - but it was tremendously influential for those on the other side of the camera. However wrong and corrupt the message of the film is, it is still a well-made film. I would go so far as to say there would have been no Gone With the Wind without Birth of a Nation. And I think that's what people who would see this film are looking for. Film students are frequently shown two well-made films that are shameless propaganda - the Russian master Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (Leninism's manifest destiny) and Alexander Nevsky (playing up historical hatred of the Germans). The idea here is not too much different. While the ideologies espoused in the films are certainly not ones we would advocate, the significance of the films lies in how they were made and how that influenced filmmakers to come.
