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Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property

2003 film by Charles Burnett

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ22350790 ↗
Source-derived summary

Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property is a 2003 documentary film about Nat Turner co-written and directed by Charles Burnett.

Plot

The documentary interweaves Thomas R. Gray's 1831 The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron's 1966 novel of the same name, and additional source material by Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Wells Brown, and Randolph Edmonds.

Cast

Different actors played Nat Turner, depending on the source material.

Nat Turner

Carl Lumbly (Gray)

Tommy Hicks (Edmonds)

James Opher (Styron)

Michael LeMelle (Brown)

Patrick Waller (Stowe)

Tom Nowicki played Thomas R. Gray, and Billy Dye played Young Nat Turner.

Release

The documentary was first shown as a "work in progress" at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in 2002 and was subsequently edited to be 26 minutes shorter. The documentary screened at multiple film festivals throughout 2003 and aired on PBS' Independent Lens the following year.

Critical reception

Scott Foundas of Variety said the documentary was "insightful, if somewhat foreshortened", finding better the "work in progress" version shared in 2002 that was 26 minutes longer. Foundas said, "While this re-edit is an improvement over the original in other respects — the cutting is more fluid, the narration has been re-recorded and the archival material... has been three-dimensionally embossed... it seems, overall, a more timid, less confrontational movie."

Jonathan Rosenbaum, writing for the Chicago Reader, called the documentary "brilliant" and described Burnett's goal: "Interviewing two dozen historians and theorists, half of them black, Burnett treats all their interpretations, many of which he dramatizes, as equally credible—a radical but plausible approach given how little is known about Turner.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property” as 2003 film by Charles Burnett. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Turner, Troublesome and Property.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2003, 1831, 1966, 2002—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Turner, Troublesome and Property providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property”, the useful work is to connect “2003 film by Charles Burnett” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q22350790. The first chronological checks are 2003, 1831, 1966 and 2002.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property primary sources, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property archive and Turner research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.