Last night’s New York Film Critics’ Circle awards dinner have already made industry headlines for the wrong reasons — Armond White’s regrettable outburst was already covered in this morning’s roundup — which has thus far obscured talk of the awards themselves. Which is doubly unfortunate, since it would appear that there were a number of valuable takeaways from that side of the evening — and none more so than Harry Belafonte’s eloquent address to Steve McQueen.
The veteran singer, actor and activist — who, incidentally, won the NYFCC’s Best Supporting Actor prize 17 years ago for “Kansas City” — was selected to present McQueen with his Best Director award for “12 Years a Slave.” Given Belafonte’s history with the Civil Rights Movement and ongoing political involvement, the NYFCC could hardly have chosen a more appropriate figure to do the honors. Belafonte, for his part, chose to make the most of the moment with a deeply personal speech, in which he articulated his previous struggles with racial identity and explained just how deeply McQueen’s slavery drama resonated with him.
Praising McQueen’s accomplishment as “redeeming” and “transformative” in contemporary Hollywood, Belafonte further described the British director as “a genius, an artist … of African descent, although he’s not from America, he is of America, and he is of that America which is part of his own heritage.” That tribute is indicative of just how deeply the film’s industry supporters do feel about it; Belafonte’s is not, of course, a voice in the wilderness. (It’s also nice, given the snide assumptions made in some quarters about older viewers’ response to the film, to hgear this vigorous endorsement coming from an 86-year-old.)
Anyway, a lovely moment, and one will surely stay with Steve McQueen for longer than one critic’s personal attacks.
The full transcript of Belafonte’s speech is below…
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The power of cinema is an uncontainable thing and it’s truly remarkable, in its capacity for emotional evolution. When I was first watching the world of cinema, there was a film that stunned the world, with all its aspects and art form. They did a lot, at that time. The film was done by D.W. Griffith, and it was called The Birth of a Nation, and it talked about America’s story, its identity, and its place in the universe of nations. And that film depicted the struggles of this country with passion and power and great human abuse. Its depiction of black people was carried with great cruelty. And the power of cinema styled this nation, after the release of the film, to riot and to pillage and to burn and to murder black citizens. The power of film.
At the age of five, in 1932, I had the great thrill of going to the cinema. It was a great relief for those of us who were born into poverty, a way we tried to get away from the misery. One of the films they made for us, the first film I saw, was Tarzan of the Apes. [Ed note: The movie is called Tarzan the Ape Man.] In that film, [we] looked to see the human beauty of Johnny Weissmuller swinging through the trees, jump off, and there spring to life, while the rest were depicted as grossly subhuman, who were ignorant, who did not know their way around the elements, living in forests with wild animals. Not until Johnny Weissmuller stepped into a scene did we know who we were, according to cinema.
Throughout the rest of my life … on my birth certificate, it said “colored.” Not long after that, I became “Negro.” Not too long after that, I became “black.” Most recently, I am now “African-American.” I spent the better part of almost a century just in search of, seeking, “Who am I? What am I? What am I to be called? What do I say? Who do I appeal to? Who should I be cautious of?” In this life, when we walk into the world of cinema, we use the instrument that is our ability to try to give another impression of who and what we were as a people, and what we meant to this great nation called America. I’m glad that Sidney Poitier should step into this space right after the Second World War, and new images of what we are as people, certainly as men.
A lot’s gone on with Hollywood. A lot could be said about it. But at this moment, I think what is redeeming, what is transformative, is the fact that a genius, an artist, is of African descent, although he’s not from America, he is of America, and he is of that America which is part of his own heritage; [he] made a film called 12 Years a Slave, which is stunning in the most emperial way. So it’s a stage that enters a charge made by The Birth of a Nation, that we were not a people, we were evil, rapists, abusers, absent of intelligence, absent of soul, heart, inside. In this film, 12 Years a Slave, Steve steps in and shows us, in an overt way, that the depth and power of cinema is there for now the world to see us in another way.
I was five when I saw Tarzan of the Apes, and the one thing I never wanted to be, after seeing that film, was an African. I didn’t want to be associated with anybody that could have been depicted as so useless and meaningless. And yet, life in New York led me to other horizons, other experiences. And now I can say, in my 87th year of life, that I am joyed, I am overjoyed, that I should have lived long enough to see Steve McQueen step into this space and for the first time in the history of cinema, give us a work, a film, that touches the depths of who we are as a people, touches the depths of what America is as a country, and gives us a sense of understanding more deeply what our past has been, how glorious our future will be, and could be.
I think that the Circle Award made a wise decision picking you as the director of the year. I think we look forward in anticipation to what you do in the future. But even if you never do anything else, many in your tribe, many in the world, are deeply grateful of the time and genius it took to show us a way that it should be. Forever and eternally grateful to say that we are of African descent. Thank you.