Event

Sing Your Song

In Person: Daughter/Producer Gina Belafonte and Filmmaker Susanne Rostock

Interviewed by Warrington Hudlin.

Told with a remarkable sense of intimacy, visual style and musical panache, Susanne Rostock's inspiring biographical documentary Sing Your Song surveys the life and times of singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte.

Told from Harry's point of view, the film charts his life from a boy born in New York and raised in Jamaica, who returns to Harlem in his early teens where he discovers the American Negro Theater and the magic of performing. From there the film follows Harry Belafonte's rise from the jazz and folk clubs of Greenwich Village and Harlem to his emergence as a star. However, even as a superstar, the life of a black man in 1960s America was far from easy and Belafonte was confronted with the same Jim Crow laws and prejudices that every other black man, woman and child in America was facing.

From his rise to fame as a singer and his experiences touring a segregated country to his provocative crossover into Hollywood, Harry Belafonte's groundbreaking career personifies the American civil rights movement. Rostock reveals Belafonte as a tenacious hands-on activist who worked intimately with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., mobilized celebrities for social justice, participated in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and took action to counter gang violence, prisons, and the incarceration of youth. Because of his beliefs, Belafonte drew unwarranted invasions by the FBI into both his personal life and career, which led to years of struggle. But an indomitable sense of optimism motivates his path even today as he continues to ask, at 84, "What do we do now?" His example may very well inspire you to action. (USA, 2012, 104 min., color, Blu-ray)

Curated by Cindy Campbell

Sponsored by Kool Herc Productions