Fox Searchlight Launches Voter Registration Drive for ‘Birth of a Nation’ Screenings
Fox Searchlight has teamed with several chains and independent theaters to launch a voter registration drive during screenings of their upcoming drama “The Birth of a Nation.”
The initiative supports Tuesday’s National Voter Registration Day and will continue through the opening weekend of “The Birth of a Nation,” ending on Oct. 9.
Participating theaters, including Bow Tie Cinemas; Emagine Entertainment; Malco Theatres; Marcus Theatres; Wehrenberg Theatres; Amstar Cinemas; Movie Taverns; The Grand Theatres; Bryn Mawr Film Institute, Bryn Mawr, PA; Glenwood Arts Theatre, Overland Park, KS; Little Theatre, Rochester, NY; Midtown Cinema, Harrisburg, PA; Tower City Cinemas, Cleveland, OH; Cedar Lee Theatre, Cleveland Heights, OH; Cinema Arts Theatre, Fairfax, VA; Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, MI; The Neon, Dayton, OH, will hold voter enrollment in their lobbies.
The specialty film company has also partnered with voting organizations The League of Women Voters; Delta Rho Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc.; National Coalition of Black Civic Participation and its Ohio Unity Coalition and North Carolina Black Youth Vote Network; NYC Votes; and National Voter Registration Day.
The stars of “Birth of a Nation,” Nate Parker, Colman Domingo, Aunjanue Ellis, Aja Naomi King, and Gabrielle Union, recorded a get-out-the-vote PSA that will be shown before the promotional screenings of their film on Tuesday.
“No one has the right to prevent you from participating in what makes America’s democracy so great: the right to vote,” Parker says in the video.
“Birth of a Nation” follows Parker’s Nat Turner as the literate slave strikes a deal with his owner, Samuel Turner (played by Armie Hammer), to become a traveling preacher who subdues slaves. After witnessing countless atrocities, he becomes the leader of the bloodiest slave uprising in American history in the hopes of leading his people to freedom. Penelope Ann Miller, Jackie Earle Haley, and Mark Boone Jr. also star in the movie.
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