Sing Your Song - DaaVeeDee

Sing Your Song (Blu-Ray) (*)

~~$23.99~~ $17.97

Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 )

Product Origin/Format:
United Kingdom ( Blu-Ray/Region B )

Running Time:
104 min

Aspect Ratio:
Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
Anamorphic Widescreen
Interactive Menu
Scene Access
Trailer(s)

Movie filmed in 2011 and produced in:
United States ( USA, Canada )

Directed By:
Susanne Rostock

Written By:
Susanne Rostock

Actors:
Harry Belafonte ..... Himself
Sidney Poitier ..... Himself
Marge Champion ..... Herself
Fran Scott Attaway ..... Herself
Julian Bond ..... Himself
George Schlatter ..... Himself
Adrienne Belafonte-Biesmeyer ..... Herself
Diahann Carroll ..... Herself
Mike Merrick ..... Himself
Julie Robinson ..... Herself
Coretta Scott King ..... Herself
Merv Griffin ..... Herself
Odetta ..... Herself
Gloria Lynne ..... Herself
Robert De Cormier ..... Himself

Synopsis:

Harry Belafonte is not just one of the greatest entertainers of our time; he has led one of the great American lives of the last century. Susanne Rostock's Sing Your Song lets us share in the struggles, the tragedies, and, most of all, the triumphs of this extraordinary icon. Belafonte grew up, poverty-ridden, in Harlem and Jamaica. After fighting in the Second World War, he realised he wanted a life in the arts. He became a star, and at the same time lived a life of active involvement in breaking down racial barriers that had never been broken before. He had a passionate involvement at the heart of the civil rights movement and countless other political and social causes. Sing Your Song is an inspiring story of performance and protest, from a superstar singer and actor who was on the front lines of practically every progressive political battle in modern memory. Along the way he became close to some of the most talented and influential people of the latter half of the 20th Century - from fellow students at his acting class Tony Curtis, Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier and Walter Matthau, to Eleanor Roosevelt, James Baldwin, Bob Dylan, Fidel Castro, Miriam Makeba and Nelson Mandela. But it was his intimate relationship with civil rights hero Dr Martin Luther King that was to be the most significant of his long political life.
Belafonte has touched countless lives, both as an artist and an activist and Sing Your Song is a rare opportunity to share his story.

It's only fitting that Harry Belafonte's big, bountiful life has inspired an expansive, understandably hagiographic documentary, 'Sing Your Song.' Silky voiced and snake hipped, with a supernova smile that dazzled Americans and helped demolish racial prejudices, he remains perhaps best known for his lilting version of the Caribbean folk tune 'The Banana Boat Song' ('Day-O'), a requiem for the exhausted working man. Given his decades of tireless globe-sprinting crusading - alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and African activists alike - it's clear that Mr. Belafonte rarely embraced the plaintive refrain of 'Day-O': 'Daylight come and me wan' go home.' Did Mr. Belafonte ever take a break? It's hard to say from the headline approach of 'Sing Your Song,' which was directed by Susanne Rostock and produced by five people, including the youngest of his four children, Gina Belafonte. He was born in New York to Jamaican immigrants in 1927 - he turns 85 on March 1 - a hard start that, as he writes in the recent 'My Song: A Memoir,' meant 'I was born into poverty, grew up in poverty, and for a long time poverty was all I thought I'd know.' There were years of deprivations, long interludes in Jamaica and an adolescent stint in New York passing as white so that his family could live in a restricted apartment building. Clocking in at a crammed 104 minutes, 'Sing Your Song' only skims the surface of Mr. Belafonte's life - it also sometimes politely edges around it or just ignores the messier bits - but what a rich, glossy surface it is, the stuff of a bildungsroman.

The film is less a true documentary that examines a noteworthy life than a call to action for viewers to emulate Belafonte's example of engaging with the world's problems and searching for solutions no matter how long-range they may be. Belafonte put his considerable weight behind the project, his daughter is among the producers, and he is the source for many of its rich anecdotes so the film teeters on the brink of hagiography. What rescues it from self-aggrandizement is how the film functions as an extension of the Belafonte himself: The film catches a man who has spent a lifetime practicing what he preaches. He has put his butt on the line in Ethiopia and Haiti as well as Alabama and Mississippi.

This product was added to our catalog on Wednesday 31 October, 2012.