Harry Belafonte
“Sing your Song,” one of two opening night documentaries, is a moving portrait of Harry Belafonte, an entertainer turned activist, who became a vocal member of the civil rights movement. Activism was, in many ways, thrust upon him. As a black entertainer singing for white audiences in the 50s and 60s, even a gesture as small as holding a white woman’s hand on stage was considered a revolutionary act. As his fame grew ¬– he seems to have lost track of how many Grammys he won – he was nudged into the political sphere by Martin Luther King. “I knew I would always be his servant,” Belafonte says, after meeting King for the first time. From that point on, Belafonte was a major behind-the-scenes political player: He had Jack and Bobby Kennedy as well as Eleanor Roosevelt in his phonebook. He lent his presence wherever it might be helpful – to the March on Washington in 1962, to a besieged home in Mississippi after a string of lynches, to Apartheid South Africa, and, most recently, to the prison reform movement.
Belafonte, who is now a rusty-voiced 80-year-old, narrates the history of the sixties with humor and intelligence; the material might be familiar, but Belafonte provides a new angle. He intersperses the narrative with political tidbits that will delight the political wonk as well as a passion for humankind that will appeal to anyone with a heart. For the cinefile, there are plenty of clips of his golden days, performing with Dorothy Dandrige in “Carmen Jones,” and waggling his hips as he sings “Daylight Comes and Me Want to Go Home.” Unlike other singers from the sixties, Belafonte’s music doesn’t reveal his political beliefs – perhaps as black singer, he was implicitly forced to censor himself. While lacking a bit in psychological rigor, “Sing Your Song” is homage to a person who clearly deserves one.
Jessica Weisberg
Jessica Weisberg is a writer currently living in Chicago. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, n+1, AlterNet, The American Prospect, and newyorker.com, among other publications. She worked as a fact-checker at The New Yorker ...
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