NEWS

‘Sugar Cane Alley’ screening, panel, to examine film’s significance

CHAPEL HILL -- The 20th birthday of "Sugar Cane Alley," considered one of the most important independent films of the last 50 years, will be celebrated with a screening, discussion and introduction by its director on March 18 at the Carolina Theater.

The movie's writer and director, Euzhan Palcy ("U-zan PAL-zee"), will open the free public event at 7 p.m. After the film, she will join a panel discussion with black activist, writer and student Michael Simanga of Atlanta and Jesus Nebot, a Spanish filmmaker, producer and actor. The film is in French with English subtitles. The theater faces South Columbia Street near Franklin Street.

The event will conclude the Diaspora Festival for Independent Black Films sponsored during the 2002-03 academic year by the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

" ‘Sugar Cane Alley’ is possibly the first film to successfully capture the complex interplay of tradition and culture in an Afro-Caribbean nation in the grasp of modernity, racism and colonial pressures," said Dr. Joseph F. Jordan, center director and a professor of Afro and Afro-American studies.

Set on the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French possession, in the early 1930s, the movie is a story of love and sacrifice between Jose, 11, and his grandmother, who works in sugar cane fields and does laundry for a living.

Other children Jose’s age work in the cane fields to help their families, but Jose’s grandmother insists that he get an education. She keeps newspapers for him to read, sends him to school and eventually moves from their small village to Fort-de-France, the country’s capital, to facilitate Jose’s studies.

There Jose earns a partial scholarship to high school. From friends and teachers, he learns about race, class, poverty and colonial divisions within his culture. The film shows the balance that must be sought between overcoming gross and subtle barriers of race and class while honoring one’s roots and heritage.

Materials from the American University Library laud Palcy’s direction: "The film maintains close focus on the psychological experience of the boy hero but packs the screen … with illuminating and contextualizing material."

Palcy, a Martinique native who now lives in France, began her career with the French National Radio and Television station on the island. She made three minor films before landing a French government grant for young directors to create "Sugar Cane Alley." Martinican officials also backed the project. Palcy drew the script from the book "Black Shack Alley" by Joseph Zobel.

The film, made on a meager budget of $800,000, broke all box office records in Martinique when it premiered in 1983. The movie also enjoyed success in French box offices and commercial success when released in the United States.

"Sugar Cane Alley" won more than than 17 international prizes, including the Silver Lion for Best First Feature and Best Female Lead at the Venice Film Festival; the Cesar for Best First Film, in France; and in America, the First Prize Critics Award at the Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival.

American critic Leonard Maltin, who writes an annual "Movie & Video Guide," gave "Sugar Cane Alley" three and a half out of four stars, calling it a "beautifully made, heartfelt drama … (with) memorable characterizations; a humanist drama of the highest order."

Palcy, who focuses on social change and cultural issues in her work, was the first woman of African descent to receive a major Hollywood film contract -- for "A Dry White Season" (1989), which highlighted apartheid in South Africa. Palcy directed Susan Sarandon, Donald Sutherlin and Marlon Brando in the film, which drew four stars from critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and an Oscar nomination for Brando.

Her other works include "The Ruby Bridges Story" (1999), about a young girl who integrated a Louisiana school, for the Wonderful World of Disney, and "The Killing Yard" (2001), about the 1971 Attica prison uprising, for Showtime. At the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, Palcy won the Sojourner Truth Award, the annual prize of Agora, an organization that presents films from Africa at the festival.
Simanga, who will join Palcy in the Chapel Hill discussion, was a key member of the Congress of African Peoples and other cultural organizations in his native Detroit, where he grew up during the civil rights activism of the 1960s. He helped organize the National Black Political Assembly and was secretary general of the Michigan Black Political Assembly.

Now a music producer and writer, Simanga produced Grammy Award-winning vocalist Cassandra Wilson’s latest release, "Belly of the Sun." He wrote the novel "In the Shadow of the Son" (Chicago: Third World Press, 2000), an examination of community, politics and family ties in a black urban setting.

Nebot (NA-but), of Santa Monica, Calif., has acted in television series distributed internationally by Warner Brothers and the ABC drama "NYPD Blue." He has appeared in and directed independent films including "No Turning Back," an award winner at several festivals including the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival in 2002. Nosotros, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the image of Latinos through the entertainment industry, recently named Nebot its Independent Filmmaker of the Year.

For more information about the March 18 event, call the Stone Center at 919-962-9001.

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Contact: Jocelyn Womack, Stone Center, (919) 962-0395, Jocelyn_Womack@unc.edu