Paris.– 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 the press during a stay in Paristhis 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 Europe, and in the States, that I went to,” he said.
D”The first question you get, is ‘Is it a black film?’ All of them agree, it’s not going to do good in Europe, 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.
Danny Glover, one of the most famous black actors in America, had to go to Venezuela to get the funding for a movie with “no white heroes.”
George Lucas had to pay for Red Tails himself.
This is how hollywood works
EDIT: And some of you motherfuckers are still getting it twisted.
The couple of people responding to my Danny Glover/Toussaint post with things like “well prove to Hollywood there’s an audience!” are missing the point.
It’s not about the fact that there aren’t enough black people who’d want to go see this movie.
It’s entirely about the fact that there is a fundamental deficiency in the psychology of the average white American viewer.
It’s about the same thing that makes white people unable to recognize the humanity of black people
The same thing that made all those dumbass kids assume Rue and Thresh were white
The problem isn’t with black people, black actors or black stories, the problem has always been with y’all.
(Source: youngbadmangone)
1. Memorias del subdesarrollo ( Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968, Cuba) Dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
2. Invasión (1969, Argentina) Dir. Hugo Santiago
3. Sur ( The South, 1988, Argentina, France) Dir. Fernando Solanas
4. El compadre Mendoza (1934, Mexico) Dir. Fernando de Fuentes, Juan Bustillo…
Its sad that I’ve only seen about 20 of these.
Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers.
Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence’s most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.
The fact that most viewers outside Brazil don’t know how the ordeal ended will add to the suspense, but either way this is a gripping experience.
Directed by: Jose Padilha, Felipe Lacerda
This is oddly adorable
Very cool.
