“Sing Your Song does three things only a superior bio-doc can do: Tell a stirring life story, place that life in the context of its times, and portray it with the kind of depth and breadth that makes you wonder why it hasn’t been told before.”
Screened in tribute to Harry Belafonte (1927 - 2023)
Harry Belafonte rose to fame in the 1950s, bringing the Caribbean sounds of calypso music to the charts and starring in a handful of hit movies, including Carmen Jones and Buck and the Preacher. But the trappings of fame were never as important to Belfonte as the opportunities they created for him to try to make the world a better place. (He marched with Martin Luther King Jr, fought against apartheid in South Africa, spoke out for economic justice in America and abroad, raised money for famine relief, and was blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy's for condemming his communist witch hunts.) Susanne Rostock’s documentary offers a portrait of Belafonte as an artist and an activist, in which he discusses his music and acting as well as the remarkable men and women he's worked with over the decades, and the triumphs and disappointments of his personal life.
