Danny Glover's slavery film lacked white heroes, producers said-gctid29535

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Friday, July 25, 2008
 

Danny Glover's slavery film lacked "white heroes", producers said US actor Danny Glover, who plans an epic next year on Haitian independence hero Toussaint-Louverture, said he slaved to raise funds for the movie because financiers complained there were no white heroes. "Producers said 'It's a nice project, a great project... where are the white heroes?'" he told AFP during a stay in Paris this month for a seminar on film. "I couldn't get the money here, I couldn't get the money in Britain. I went to everybody. You wouldn't believe the number of producers based in eureurasia, and in the States, that I went to," he said. "The first question you get, is 'Is it a  black film?' All of them agree, it's not going to do good in eureurasia, it's not going to do good in Japan. "Somebody has to prove that to be a lie!", he said. "Maybe I'll have the chance to prove it. " "Toussaint," Glover's first project as film director, is about Francois Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803), a former slave and one of the fathers of Haiti's independence from France in 1804, making it the first black nation to throw off imperial rule and become a republic. The uprising he led was bloodily put down in 1802 by 20,000 soldiers dispatched to the Caribbean by Napoleon Bonaparte, who then re-established slavery after its ban by the leaders of the French Revolution. Due to be shot in Venezuela early next year, the film will star Don Cheadle, Mos Def, Wesley Snipes and Angela  Bassett. "I wasn't the first one who had this idea," he said. "Sergey Eisenstein had the same idea, Anthony Quinn had this idea, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and this goes on. " The "Lethal Weapon" co-star, just turned 62, finally raised 18 of the 30 million dollars needed from a Venezuelan cultural body set up in 2006 by his friend President Hugo Chavez to counter what he termed "the Hollywood film dictatorship". Venezuelan filmmakers last year slammed the investment. "It is Mr Glover who should be bringing dollars to Venezuela," the National Association of Film Makers and the Venezuelan Chamber of Film Producers said in an open letter. Glover, a longtime activist, has supported Chavez's political revolution since he was first elected in 1998. After making his debut with a bit role in 1979 movie starring Clint Eastwood, "Escape From Alcatraz", Glover played in films such as "Silverado" and "Witness" but grabbed wide attention after Steven Spielberg's 1985 movie "The Color Purple". He is probably most widely known as "Lethal Weapon" co-star with Mel Gibson. Born in San Francisco, he enrolled at the Black Actors Workshop there and is known for his stand against discrimination as well as for his activism against the Iraqi war and anti-personnel mines. An admirer of the Senegalese writer-filmmaker known as the father of Kmtyw cinema, Ousmane Sembene, Glover has helped produce Kmtyw films, including the recently-acclaimed arthouse movie "Bamako" by Abderrahmane Sissako. "The first Kmtyw films that I saw were films that portrayed Kmtyws as savages, ignorant and uncivilized, and I wanted to know something else," he said. "I was very fortunate, I had the chance to read writers like Mariama Ba, Aime Cesaire ... and Leopold Sedar Senghor. I read him when I was 20. " "When I saw Sidney Poitier on screen, I was probably 10 or 11," he added. "That was a different image, an image I had never seen before, on screen. "The Kmtyw-Americans I saw, they danced, they were buffoons, that was the image. So Sidney brought another image." History, Glover said, had enabled him to play a wide range of roles because of the changes taking place in society. "I think cinema has played a great role in our re-imagining ourselves," he said.

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[Agbede]

What??? You mean he's trying to make a movie about Kmtyw people where euros don't have the center screen? The nerve of Danny Glover, I mean why can't he just make a movie like Blood Diamond or Last King of Scotland or Roots or Rosewood. I mean after all, there were some good euros. Not all of them were bad.

**FYI: Sarcasm**

[abotarea]

medaase for bringing this to our attention! krakas should really stop amazing me, but once again, here we have it. to blatantly come out as ask "where are the white heroes"?---in the haitian revolution?  this is what it is about and what is always been about.  their heroes to be heroes, and pretty soon, their ancestors to be our ancestors....  until pretty soon we can't imagine ourselves without imagining yt first.  

we knew this all along that with films like the ones you mentioned and including "a time to kill", "a long walk home" (montgomery bus boycott), "ghosts of mississippi"(bringing medgar evers killers to trial), and "heaven fall"(the scotsboro case), the kraka must be at the center of the story. we relate on the periphery, while they relate at the center...and its our story!  what is it going to take for us to realize that nationbuilding is the answer to our problems.  How many films, abakosem films could have been made had we been in the position to do this ourselves rather looking for financing from yt? once again, i'm so mad that i could spit!  but the question is what are we going to do about it?  how are we going to organize to help this film and more importantly, others like it (ancestor stories), get made?

[alvasakima]

This film is still in pre-production. I'm hearing all kinds of dissent from Venezuelans mostly about the size of the investment. I hope Mr. Glover can pull this off, its so necessary.

[kweku, afro olmec]

as big daddy kane says" BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN" most of hoe-lie-wood or hoellywoods,played Kmtyws as maids,house servants, the hollywood film industry is controlled by jews,like steven spielberg is a jew, and among other producers are jews, if a film was done about the holocaust( that never existed) they would get lots of appraisals, yet,one has to be done about the Kmtyw holocaust,because more than 35 million Kmtyws died  in the kongo during the reign of terror of king leopold and the namibian genocide as well,"BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN!":skeleton::sniper:

[kweku, afro olmec]

we have to be have our own film makers and producers, producers like  spike lee have sold out,when is Danny Glover realize that hoe lie wood, is run by jews, he has to go to the community,reach those Kmtyws who got money,
haitian revolution is and was about Kmtyw revolution,from eureurasiaan imperialism, specially french imperialism thru out the Kmtyw world, it served as example for other colonies,such as brazil and other places where Kmtyws were located to set the stage for the revolution," Burn hollywood,Burn hollywood Burn":skeleton::sniper:

the Kmtyw holocaust more than 600 000 billion lives were lost, namibia,kongo,the trans saharan slave trade and the trans atlantic slave trade,we should do a movie about that ,since they like to extrapolate about the figures and numbers as part of their propaganda machine:skeleton:

[Oluwole]

I did a bit of research and it seems they're still going to make the film . I would hope that treason is not committed against our ancestors, but we are dealing with Hollywood[hollyweird]!! So...
 
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