We all have our heroes in life, some look up to Baseball players, Politicians, Astronauts, Actors or even filmmakers. For Seymour Stern it was a director named D.W. Griffith. In fact it became an obsession that Seymour would take to his grave. Seymour Stern was a man obsessed: with the life and work of D.W. Griffith, with the future of artistic cinema, and with the development of a responsible yet impassioned film criticism in America. His lifelong pursuits led him toward some brilliant contributions in all these areas; they also led him astray in the directions of selfindulgence and frustration. His magnum opus on Griffith was never completed, and his increasingly insular ways detached him from many of his colleagues and public. Above all, his strange obsession with Griffith haunted his life, as it continues to haunt those who would follow his footsteps. Writer/historian Ira H. Gallen has spent over a decade going through all of Sterns published and unpublished documentation on The Birth of a Nation, to create one of the most comprehensive and compelling volume on how "the father of American film" created his controversial epic. It's the definitive reference book as the film reaches its Centennial year.
