Sing Your Song, the Audience Award Winner at last year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, screens Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the North Island College theatre at the Courtenay Campus.
Sing Your Song is an up-close look at the great American artist and activist Harry Belafonte. A champion of human rights worldwide, Belafonte is one of the truly heroic cultural and political figures of the past 60 years.
Told from Harry’s point of view, the film charts his life from a boy born in New York and raised in Jamaica, who returns to Harlem in his early teens where he discovers the American Negro Theater and the magic of performing. From there the film follows Belafonte’s rise from the jazz and folk clubs of Greenwich Village and Harlem to his emergence as a star.
Even as a superstar, the life of a black man in 1960s America was far from easy and Belafonte was confronted with the same Jim Crow laws and prejudices that every other black man, woman and child in America was facing so Harry was compelled to challenge the basic injustice of his society.
This film brings Belafonte the activist to the screen, outlining his engagement with the struggle for human rights on many fronts including workers’ rights. Among other things, the film presents a brief look at the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of an insider, someone who despite his high profile, wasn’t afraid to spend time in the trenches.
This feature length film is being screened as part of Mayworks, a Festival of Labour and the Arts sponsored in part by the Campbell River, Courtenay and District labour Council.
Admission is by donation at the door.
