Keep fishing Phil.
I have it on DVD as part of the Mondo Cane Collection Box set from Blue Underground, haven't watched it for years though. The set contains two versions of the film, standard 'English' version and the Director's Cut which is about 12m longer. There's a great documentary in the box set too that's well worth a look.
Jesus Christ, has anyone else seen this?
70s Italian film about US slavery, I really wish I hadn't watched it.
Anyone see something I'm missing here?
So far I've heard the opening song - and I'm pretty disturbed by that.
I think we can safely say that the disturbance factor rises as it goes on.
It's an exploitation piece that does nothing serious to raise consciousness about slavery.
Did you...er... like the movie, if that's the right word?
Was going to ignore the film but having watched the two yt vids and having studied History in Film which required a viewing of Birth of A Nation I'm going to watch this later and add my thoughts to the thread.
I'll be very interested to hear them.
Since I watched it, I've been through the whole spectrum of reactions, from disgust to admiration. At the moment I'm thinking it's brilliant, and in all probability extremely realistic. The revulsion people feel while watching it doesn't come from any particularly gory or explicit scenes--other movies are ten times worse in those regards--but from the attitudes expressed by the characters, black and white. I think it's salutary to find oneself disgusted by such attitudes.
My first thoughts is that it's made hard-hitting by the lightness of the music as well as what's shown, for some reason this seems quite disturbing matched to the images you're seeing.