Belafonte makes plea for doc filmmaking in Berlin
by Annika Pham
Legendary US singer/actor and human rights activist Harry Belafonte was in Berlin yesterday to support the US documentary Sing Your Song about his life and the Swedish film The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975.
“In this time, when technology is used to try to understand the world and to explore the future of filmmaking, documentaries are extremely important to tell true human stories. I’m very aware of the fact that today’s younger generations do not know what happened back in the 1970s; information just wasn’t made available easily . With Sing Your Song and The Black Power Mistape, I feel there is hope and much to be celebrated.
“There is a lot of focus these days on what’s happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen. I hope independent documentary filmmakers understand that we are writing history and that they will show passion in capturing this positive side of humanity, not the negative side, the destruction of humanity seen in films from US studios,” he said to the audience at Berlin’s Cinestar cinema last night.
Belafonte will take part in a Talent Campus session tomorrow. Directed by Susanne Rostock, Sing Your Song was shown yesterday as a Berlinale Special Gala screening. K5 Internacional has picked up world sales.
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is sold at the European Film Market by Paris-based Wide Management.
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