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Euzhan Palcy
First Black Female Filmmaker

 

Euzhan Palcy is the first black woman filmmaker to have directed a feature-length Hollywood film, A DRY WHITE SEASON(1989). Like Palcy herself, the film is controversial, and of uncompromising passion and conviction.

 

Growing up in Martinique, Palcy knew by the age of ten that she wanted to be a filmmaker. Despite the lack of film and theater in her country, the American films she managed to see depicted a people who bore no relationship or resemblance of the people she knew, either in color or custom. By the age of fourteen, Palcy had grown angry about the misrepresentations being perpetuated about black people. That anger fueled her early decision to become a filmmaker. In an interview with Ally Acker, Palcy spoke of the shock that this brought to her family:

 

At this time, you have to realize, saying to my father or people in Martinique, "I want to be a filmmaker." It's as if your child today would say... "I want to be a cosmonaut."

 

By seventeen, Palcy showed enough promise to have the local TV station offer her a weekly poetry show. She had already released an album of children's songs that did well commercially. After Palcy undertook her first filmmaking venture in Martinique, creating a film out of her own drama LA MESSAGÈRE (1975), she knew it was time to leave home for a real apprenticeship. "I knew I had to go to Paris, but I was so afraid. Paris was 5,000 kilometers away... so far!"

 

Her father, whom Palcy calls the first feminist she ever knew, made her promise to take a more secure route and continue her education. Following his advice, she decided to pursue her undergraduate studies at the Sorbonne in French Literature, and in art and archeology. She passed the very competitive entrance examination at the renowned Louis Lumiere School of Cinema (of which only about twenty in two hundred are accepted), and went on to earn a photography degree.

 

Palcy worked as an assistant editor on films with young African directors who were shooting in France. She also spent her free moments writing and rewriting what would become SUGAR CANE ALLEY(1983). She wrote the first draft when she just was seventeen, based on the novel "Black Shack Alley" (1953) by a Martinique author, Joseph Sobel. In 1975 she met the man who would become her Parisian godfather and would help her to realize her dream--François Truffaut. Truffaut's daughter Laura asked for the script and promised that if she liked it, she would pass it on to her father.

 

The next thing Palcy knew: "He called me! I couldn't believe It. Truffaut called me. I remember the man, with his intense, small beady eyes. Both he and his assistant at the time, Suzanne Shiffman, loved my script. He showed me how to rework it."

 

Truffaut's encouragement gave Palcy the belief and determination she needed to go to battle. Even with his help, it would take three long years to raise the $800,000 she needed to make SUGAR CANE ALLEY (Rue Cases Nègres). The film, a moving and beautiful piece, portrays the growing pains and joys of a twelve-year-old boy living on a poverty-stricken Martinique plantation of the colonial '30's. Receiving rave reviews, it won over 14 international prizes, including the Silver Lion for Best First Feature and Best Female Lead at the Venice Film Festival, in France, the Cesar for Best First Film, and in America, the First Prize Critics Award at the Houston Film Festival.

 

After SUGAR CANE ALLEY, Hollywood beckoned Euzhan Palcy:

 

They called me, and very few black directors are called to Hollywood. But they wanted me to do their stories. I said, "I appreciate your interest, but I am a Black Filmmaker." "Your other white filmmakers can do those stories." Palcy decided she wanted to do a film about apartheid. "I also know that Hollywood would not do a film about black people unless the main character was a white man."

 

She chose as her second film, a story based on a novel by Andre Brink. The protagonist of A DRY WHITE SEASON (1989), Ben Du Toit (played with sensitive skill by Donald Sutherland), is a wealthy, white South African, sheltered from the horrific realities of apartheid. In the middle of his life, when racial injustice shakes the very roots of his existence, he cannot deny what he feels is right: to stand up for the under class.

 

She found an ally in producer Paula Weinstein, who supported the project throughout. A rejection from Warner Brothers served as a reminder of the recent controversy over another South African film "Cry Freedom" (1987), which had bombed at the box office. Finally, Palcy and Weinstein found a sympathetic ear with Alan Ladd at MGM, where the film found a home. Marlon Brando deemed the film so important that he ended a nine-year period of seclusion, (since "The Formula" 1980) to play the role of the famous South African lawyer, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

 

A DRY WHITE SEASON (1989) depicts the black experience in South Africa-the daily life in the townships, which Palcy portrayed not as slums but simply very poor places where determined people struggle to live decently.

 

Palcy infuses her characters with her own strong will. As a "fighter with a mission," she has let nothing stand in her way and consequently, found herself in 1989 in the unique position of being the only black woman ever to direct a feature of all-star caliber and to create a film about a black struggle that transcends itself into a human struggle.

 

Her 1992 film SIMEON won awards at the Milano and Montreal Film Festivals, and a Special Jury Prize at the 1993 Brussels Film Festival.

 

We salute Euzhan Palcy... A NABFEME Shero!

 



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