Saturday, 10/20, 7:00pm (Session VII)

Director: Susan Rostock
Producer: Michael Cohl 

Description: 

Sing Your Song is an up-close look at a great American, Harry Belafonte. A patriot to the last and a champion for worldwide human rights, Belafonte is one of the truly heroic cultural and political figures of the past sixty years. 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 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. Among other things, the film presents a brief look at the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of an insider, someone who, despite his high profile, was not afraid to spend time in the trenches. From Harlem to Mississippi to Africa and South Central Los Angeles, Sing Your Song takes us on a journey through Harry Belafonte’s life, work and most of all, his conscience, as it inspires us all to action. 

Biography: 

Susanne Rostock’s filmmaking is a stunning thirty-even years of some of the most compelling documentaries from each decade. While a graduate student in film at NYU, as a reward she was given a print of Battle of Algiers by Pontecorvo to study over the weekend. It was in pouring over this poignant telling of rebellion that Susanne Rostock’s passion to create films that put a human face to struggle was born. Upon receiving her MFA, she was awarded a grant from the Eli Lilly Endowment to make a film about an experimental halfway house for women convicts to spend the last six months of their sentence on the outside. Release, a critical success, became widely used in the campaign to restructure the criminal justice system for women. A second grant from the Eli Lilly Endowment allowed Susanne to explore an innovative model of multicultural education for American public schools. It’s All Us, with a strong grassroots campaign, became a much-acclaimed centerpiece for discussion about elementary school education. Her twenty years of multi award-winning collaboration as editor with director Michael Apted has produced such soulful and provocative films as The Long Way Home, two years in the life of Boris Grebenshikov, the first Russian musician to receive an American record contract. 

Contact Information: 

E-mail: cbanach@s2bnent.com
Web site: www.singyoursongthemovie.com