Obama needs support – Belafonte
Written by Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Sunday, September 20, 2009 8:21:06 AM
AMERICAN artistes Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover have said US President Barack Obama needs support if he has to effect the change he promised.
Addressing journalists here in Havana, Cuba on Friday evening following the inauguration of the Travelling Caribbean Film Show and offices in Cuba, Belafonte said the world is in front of a crisis.
"Many people have high hopes but little of the hope is realised, delivered as promised," he said. "President Obama raised great optimism but it is not enough for us to stand back and watch him face the many complicated problems alone. All of us must get behind him and if it is necessary force him to make, execute policies to the interests of Africa and Afro-Americans, and the marginalised peoples of the world."
Belafonte said President Obama was the hope for those who looked for a better world.
"He [President Obama] spoke strongly for change and I think he meant change for everyone," he said. "We seek that he directs that change to our interests."
Belafonte said any manifestation that brought Africans, Caribbeans and Latin Americans together must be supported.
He said the Cuban initiative to showcase the Caribbean cinema talent was a strategic moment for artistes to come together.
Belafonte said he was happy that Danny Glover was selected the honorary president of the Travelling Caribbean Film Show.
"When I received the invitation to this event and saw that Danny Glover was going to attend, I said obviously selecting Danny is an act of great crisis," he joked. "I said my Cuba is in trouble. Somebody has to be there to save Cuba and the relations we have with the US.
“Danny Glover is my closest friend. We often talk of Afro-Americans plight and problems many people face."
And Hollywood film star, Glover said what Cuba had done was a beginning of an extraordinary endeavour to showcase what the Caribbean had in offer.
"It is about the Caribbean values," he said.
He said Cuba was an extraordinary country.
"And the Cuban people are exceptional," he said.
Glover, who refused to directly comment on the USA's continued embargo of Cuba and President Obama's extending of the sanctions for another year last Monday, pointed at the American Congress for the answer.
"I wanna not come on it here," he said.
Glover said he did not know the significance of President Obama's signing of the document extending the blockade adding that it was the Congress that was responsible for making that decision.
On health reforms, he said it was an opportunity for America to do what was right.
He said President Obama had support for his push for health reforms.
"We have to be careful though," he said.
Glover said he hopes to travel to Hondurus where the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup in June.
He said people who support the democratically elected government had to work hard.
Glover said the entire region support ousted leader Zelaya.
On Belafonte, he said their relationship was a quarter century old.
"He is my dearest friend," Glover said.
He called for continued struggle against marginalisation and all ills that degrade a human being.
"I am a son for the movement of liberation around the world including the Cuban Revolution," Glover said.
He said while there many challenges in the world today, there existed great opportunities as well.
Glover said it would also take artistes to help save the world.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge," said Glover. "We gonna need more imagination now to calibrate new relationships for life is about forming new relations."
Cuban culture minister Abel Prieto said Belafonte was a living legend.
He said Belafonte had never failed Cuba.
"He is a personal friend of Fidel (Castro)," Prieto said. "He is talented and an ethical person. It means a lot when there is a combination of these two values in one person and it is more outstanding when principles are not betrayed."
He said that was also the case of Glover.
"Danny Glover is a defender of [Venezuelan] Bolivarian revolution process," Prieto said.
He said countries of the South could not continue breaking their necks looking up to the North all the time for everything.
"We need to know each other and recognise ourselves," said Prieto.
Labels: BARACK OBAMA, DANNY GLOVER, HARRY BELAFONTE
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Danny Glover's slavery film lacked "white heroes", producers said
Jul 25 02:19 AM US/Eastern
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Watch the Trailer 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 AFP during a stay in Paris this 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.
"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.
"I wasn't the first one who had this idea," he said. "Sergey Eisenstein had the same idea, Anthony Quinn had this idea, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and this goes on."
The "Lethal Weapon" co-star, just turned 62, finally raised 18 of the 30 million dollars needed from a Venezuelan cultural body set up in 2006 by his friend President Hugo Chavez to counter what he termed "the Hollywood film dictatorship".
Venezuelan filmmakers last year slammed the investment.
"It is Mr Glover who should be bringing dollars to Venezuela," the National Association of Film Makers and the Venezuelan Chamber of Film Producers said in an open letter.
Glover, a longtime activist, has supported Chavez's political revolution since he was first elected in 1998.
After making his debut with a bit role in 1979 movie starring Clint Eastwood, "Escape From Alcatraz", Glover played in films such as "Silverado" and "Witness" but grabbed wide attention after Steven Spielberg's 1985 movie "The Color Purple".
He is probably most widely known as "Lethal Weapon" co-star with Mel Gibson.
Born in San Francisco, he enrolled at the Black Actors Workshop there and is known for his stand against discrimination as well as for his activism against the Iraqi war and anti-personnel mines.
An admirer of the Senegalese writer-filmmaker known as the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, Glover has helped produce African films, including the recently-acclaimed arthouse movie "Bamako" by Abderrahmane Sissako.
"The first African films that I saw were films that portrayed Africans as savages, ignorant and uncivilized, and I wanted to know something else," he said. "I was very fortunate, I had the chance to read writers like Mariama Ba, Aime Cesaire ... and Leopold Sedar Senghor. I read him when I was 20."
"When I saw Sidney Poitier on screen, I was probably 10 or 11," he added. "That was a different image, an image I had never seen before, on screen.
"The African-Americans I saw, they danced, they were buffoons, that was the image. So Sidney brought another image."
History, Glover said, had enabled him to play a wide range of roles because of the changes taking place in society.
"I think cinema has played a great role in our re-imagining ourselves," he said.
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Labels: DANNY GLOVER, HAITI, SLAVERY
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Apr 10, 2007
Press Advisory - For Immediate Release - April 10, 2007
On Friday, April 13 at 12pm, actor, producer and activist Danny Glover will be joining civil society organizations to demand that the World Bank be put on trial for the devastation that its economic policies have wreaked on poor communities and for their contribution to global warming.
"The peoples of Africa and the world are demanding an end to economic policies that put profit over and above the needs of people and the environment," said Danny Glover. "We will come together on April 13 to give a clear message to the Bank and the IMF: get out of the business of reshaping economies in a manner that increases inequalities and stop funding projects that destroy people's lives and threaten our ecosystem."
While the World Bank rhetorically acknowledges the harmful impacts that climate change will have on developing countries, activists contend that its investment portfolio has not reflected a shift away from projects that have sizable greenhouse gas emissions. The World Bank and its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have released a series of reports in the last few years, which activists see as an admission that the World Bank's policy prescriptions have not led to growth or poverty reduction in Africa.
Danny Glover will be joined by civil society organizations in Europe and the U.S. including: Christian Aid (UK), Eurodad (Belgium), World Development Movement (UK), WEED (Germany), Oil Change International (USA), the 50 Years Is Enough Network (USA), and Bank Information Center (USA).
Contact: Karen Showalter (202) 624 0632
Venue: Hotel Lombardy. 2019 'Eye' St NW (Lunch will be provided for
journalists)
Time: Friday, April 13, 12-1:30
Labels: DANNY GLOVER, World Bank
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