Sing Your Song

Running time: 105 minutes

Director: Susanne Rostock

Starring: Harry Belafonte

By any measure, Harry Belafonte's life has been an extraordinary one, and this celebratory documentary from Susanne Rostock draws on rich archival material and intimate testimonies to reveal the life and legacy of the singer, actor and social activist. What emerges is a portrait of a man whose artistic career is indivisible from his determined and ongoing commitment to fighting political and social injustice. Belafonte's early stage and singing career, inspired by Paul Robeson as well as by his time spent living in Jamaica, his experiences touring and performing in a segregated country, and his later and provocative move into Hollywood, are all woven into a story that charts a generation of struggle. Still active in his eighties, Belafonte was blacklisted in the McCarthy era, mobilised celebrities in the civil rights movement in the 60s, helped the fight against apartheid in South Africa, protested against the regimes in Haiti and the war in Iraq, as well as continuing to fight inequalities in the US that 'we thought we fixed 50 years ago'. Revealing, informative and uplifting, Rostock's film is a fitting tribute to an inspirational man.

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