The Black Activist Who Fought Against D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation”

The documentary “Birth of a Movement,” which airs on PBS at 10 P.M. on Monday, February 6th, doesn’t offer much in the way of original artistry; its form is as conventional as an on-air encyclopedia article. But its substance is so rich and its subject so significant that the bland and unconsidered format can be overlooked. The film sheds new light on the depressing history of the release of D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation”—both a repellent display of racism and the most original work of the early cinema—by unfolding the relatively unfamiliar perspective of the opposition that mobilized against it, led by the Boston-based journalist and civil-rights activist William Monroe Trotter.