Film & Television

The Birth of a Nation’s success and wide distribution increased national interest in the post-Civil War Klan. In Atlanta, the film served as an inspiration and a guide for the leaders of two early 20th-century Atlanta organizations with close connections to Stone Mountain—the modern Ku Klux Klan and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

In 2021, the Atlanta History Center was awarded the Basic Preservation Grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve and make available four Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce films spanning from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The films document Atlanta’s shifting landscape resulting from economic population growth during the mid-20th century, as well as the impact of Atlanta’s first professional soccer team.

Guy Sharp, a meteorologist on WXIA-TV, gets into costume for a dinner party announcing the release of a sequel to the movie Planet of the Apes.

Throughout the twentieth century, there was the occasional movie filmed in Georgia.

WSB, the South’s first radio station, went on the air on March 15, 1922. Its call letters later provided for the popular slogan “Welcome South, Brother.”

Local media mogul Ted Turner launched Cable News Network (CNN) in June 1980, the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage.

Atlanta native Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel, Gone With the Wind, occupies an important place in American literature.