There is nothing quite like the films of trailblazing filmmaker Euzhan Palcy, whose commitment to cinema as a tool for empathy, understanding, and social change is unparalleled. Her films explore themes of race, gender, economics, and the continual, and damaging, effects of colonialism with an incisive gaze and tender grace. Upon receiving her Honorary Academy Award in 2002, Viola Davis noted that Palcy’s work, “broke ground for Black women directors and inspired storytellers of all kinds across the globe.” Born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, Palcy studied French Literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, as well as earning degrees in Art and Archeology and film at the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière.
Her debut film, “Sugar Cane Alley (Rue Cases Nègres),” adapted from the novel of the same name by Martinican author Joseph Zobel, screened at the Venice Film Festival, where star Darling Légitimus won the Best Actress Award and Palcy received the Silver Lion for Best First Film. For her work on the film, the director became the first Black director to win the Cesar Award for Best First Film. In 1989, she became the first Black female filmmaker to have a film produced by a major Hollywood studio when MGM, then headed by Alan Ladd Jr., financed and distributed “A Dry White Season,” adapted by Palcy and Colin Welland from the novel by Andre Brink. Inspired by her commitment to using cinema for social change, Marlon Brando emerged from a nearly decade-long retirement to star alongside Donald Sutherland and Susan Sarandon in the anti-apartheid drama, earning his final Oscar nomination. The film also starred Black South African actors Zakes Mokae, Winston Ntshona, John Kani, and Thoko Ntshinga in prominent roles, which led to the film being briefly banned in the country.
Drained from the experience, Palcy’s next project was the comedic musical fairytale “Siméon.” Set in the Caribbean and Paris and featuring Zouk music from the French Caribbean band Kassav, the film stars Jean-Claude Duverger as the titular Siméon, a beloved music teacher whose ghost begins to follows the adventures of his former student Isidore (Jacob Desvarieux, the late leader and co-founder of Kassav) and Isidore’s 10-year-old daughter Orélie (Lucinda Messager). Palcy cites that working on the fable helped “heal” her from the trauma of her previous film. She later directed the three-part documentary, Aimé Césaire, A Voice For History” about the Martinican poet, playwright, and philosopher, “Ruby Bridges” for the The Wonderful World of Disney, and the Showtime drama “The Killing Yard,” about the 1971 Attica prison riot, which stars Alan Alda and Morris Chestnut.
For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus, Palcy spoke to RogerEbert.com about wanting to affect change through filmmaking from a very young age, the importance of truth when dealing with presenting history on film, and creating a body of work that will resonate with the next generation.
In your Oscar speech you talked about how with your camera, you don’t shoot; you heal. At what point did you realize filmmaking could be a tool for social change?
Very, very early on. When I say that, I know that it might sound pretentious, but that’s the truth. I always tell the truth about things, and encourage people to tell the truth, because this is your truth. At a very young age, I started to write short stories. I started, first of all, to write poems. I was a young girl and had inspiration. I love singing. I love poetry. I kept all my little books, you know, my parents saved them very carefully, gave them to me when I left to go to France, and said, “Keep them safe. You never know.” When I read my poetry that I was writing when I was ten, eleven, twelve, I say, “Oh, my God, they are so bad.” [laughs]
But anyway, I was in love with movies and every Sunday I used to go to the theater. One day I saw a movie, it was an American film. I don’t remember the name. It was about somebody Black being accused of raping a white girl, but he was innocent, and it was actually committed by a white guy who knew the family well. Then there was a chase to find the poor innocent man. I was so hurt by that film, and I kept asking why we never see Black people on screen, and when you see one, you know, look what they are showing us? It just exploded in my head, that movie, I’ll never forget it. I forgot the title, but the images stay with me. I was telling my mother about this movie and I was asking her why we don’t see black people on the screen and that it’s always white people.
And it was because those movies were from America, some came from France, but mostly they were coming from America. My mother said it was because we’re not making those movies. Then she gave me a book to read: “La Rue Cases-Nègres,” or “Sugar Cane Alley.” When I read that book I really dug into that story. It created a kind of volcanic revolution in my head and my heart, an eruption, because for the first time of my young life, I had in my hand a book written by somebody from my country, Martinique. It was [author Joseph Zobel’s] own story about his grandmother in the 1930s, but all characters in that book were people I knew. I knew people like them because they were around me in my daily life. It also meant that the situation never stopped, that bad situation never stopped. My friends were children, but their parents worked in the sugar cane plantations, so those characters in the book were very familiar to me.
After I read the book, I started to dream. I was very naive, thinking nobody had ever come across that book before because the story is so fantastic, so moving, so great. I was lucky to have that story, because I already knew at that time that I wanted to make films, but I didn’t know how. All I knew was that I wanted to do that. I wanted to do those pictures. I knew that book by heart, and I started to see the images and see the scenes and I was dreaming of those people. In my dream, I was with them, so I was making that movie in my dreams.
When I was a teenager, I knew that I had to study and I wanted to make films. It was absolutely for me a must. It was something just as necessary as the oxygen that I was breathing and I was leaving home just for that, nothing else. My father told me that I needed to go to France, but that it would be something new for us. We don’t know what will happen to you. He said I may fail and will never be able to do it, so he advised me to go to Sorbonne and to study literature, you know, something very serious, because at this time making films was not considered a real job. There was nobody around us in our country being a filmmaker. There was no film industry, except for distribution, and the many, many theaters that showed all kinds of movies coming from the United States and France. So he was very prudent, but he said, “I’ll help you. I’ll work harder to push you to do it.” He knew because I was writing music and poetry and everything at that young age, that it was not just a caprice. He knew it was something deep inside me. So he promised he’d do everything he can to have enough money to help me. And he did, my poor father. Later, he came to at least three of my movie sets.
So, I went to France. I studied and I got my degrees. I went to the most famous film school in Paris and, respecting my promise. I went to the Sorbonne, and I graduated in French literature and in theater and in art education. I had a lot of degrees, I got my training. He was able to see that he didn’t trust me for nothing and work so hard and send money to pay for everything that I needed, my needs in Paris as a student, that his money was not wasted.
Do you think studying all those other subjects on top of your love of film helped enrich the way that you approach storytelling? Having a background in literature and archeology and art and all these other ways of looking at humanity, do you think that you fueled that into your filmmaking?
I think so, because everything that I was writing, even when I was in high school, was about the struggle for a better life, or also great love stories, But, always, when you will have something like that around you, the social situation, our condition, the condition of Black folks, I couldn’t talk about the condition of white people because I didn’t know them. I would see them only on television and in the theaters, but that’s it. I knew that I couldn’t stand the fact that we were so miserable, and so I had to do something about it.
Also, the song I wrote, just to give you an idea very quickly, when I was there were two female singers that I just loved so much, and I knew almost their entire repertoire. It was Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday. Even if I could hardly understand when I was younger, the full meaning of the words, I could feel what was behind the words, and the sadness, and everything you know? I knew that that beautiful woman, she was not happy, she was thinking about how she would like to see change. That’s why seeing the people in my country, in these sugar cane fields, seeing these people have miserable lives affected me. They are very poor, and I was very lucky to be middle class, so I shared everything I had with them, everything.
And so, my movies, you know, my muse, My desire was to help very early on. At a very young age, I realized what a powerful weapon movies could be for social change. I was very aware that they could be negative or positive.
In “A Dry White Season” you specifically made sure to cast Black South African actors in those pivotal roles instead of Black American actors, so there’s an added layer of lived in authenticity to those performances. Could you talk a little bit about the casting of that film?
Ever since I started to think and to create deep inside me, I had this belief that when you deal with history, you must not, you cannot change the history. As a filmmaker you need to tell a story, so sometimes you have to add things, but you need to know how to tell it without betraying the truth. I was very aware that as a filmmaker, you have responsibility for what you put on the screen. You cannot distort history. So that’s the reason why I had to go to South Africa undercover. I had to find out the truth about some of the scenes, like the torture scene. That’s the kind of woman I am. I want to go to the nitty gritty of things. I need to, because when I talk about it, I take responsibility for it. It’s the truth. There it is. I can show you that. That’s why I went to Soweto undercover and interviewed men, women, teenagers, kids, all Black, who were selected by the very famous doctor and activist Dr. Nthato Motlana. We met in Paris. He said, “they are going to kill you.” And I said, “No, no, they won’t kill me. Don’t worry. God is protecting me.” That’s what I said to him. Then he organized everything for me because he understood that nothing would stop me.
So to go back to your question precisely, so, therefore, I told the studio, Mr. Alan Ladd Jr., bless his heart. I said, Sir, I know that you’ve agreed to produce the film, but I have one very crucial, important request. I said, I know Hollywood, when they go to any countries outside the United States and the films have Black folks, they usually cast Black Americans, African American actors, because they believe they are the best, and they don’t even look for actors in those countries. Part of it is because of money, because they want stars. I said, I understand that, but I’m going to put my life on the line. They can kill me for what I’m doing, and I’m ready. I take responsibility for it, but I cannot make that movie with my brothers and sisters who are African American. I’m not doing fiction. I’m talking about history, about things that really happened. The uprising in the 70s was horrible. So I’m not going to betray that. I want to give a voice to those people.
For example, in the film when Stanley (Zakes Mokae), the cab driver, takes Gordon (Winston Ntshona), the gardener and Gordon’s wife Emily (Thoko Ntshinga), to to the mortuary, and you see all those kids laid down with bullets and blood everywhere, and then and they touch them, and they say what their lines, when you listen to them talking with the accent, the way that they walk, they breathe…I mean, you cannot ask, and must not ask an African American actor, to do just like them. You need to have real people.
And I said, this is not a comedy, okay? This is real life. I said I will get the best, and I will train them. I am a director. I direct actors. Alan Ladd Jr. said he understood. I’m sure that he might have been the only head of a studio in Hollywood, who would let a director do that. It was very important for me, and because today I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in a mirror. When Nelson Mandela became president, he wanted to meet the woman who did that movie, because it was so accurate. So, I wouldn’t be able to look at my face in the mirror today if I had betrayed that. Andre Brink, who wrote the book, met with me in Paris secretly before the filming began, because he had to give me the rights and everything. And he told me when we met afterwards, when the movie was made, he was the first one to see the film in England. He told me, “Oh, people are saying that my book is a masterpiece. Your movie is the masterpiece. It is so real.” That’s why you know it’s important. If you want to change stuff and write a comedy, create your own story, do whatever you want, but the minute that you touch history, you cannot lie about it, you cannot cheat. You can take licenses, yes, but only if they can support the truth.
When I create, I think of the new generation. That’s why I brought those two kids to the Academy Awards with me at my official table, so they could see those girls. This is the world, Hollywood, there are those people. Look at them! I work for them. I create for the young generation, Black, white, Latino, Chinese and African. Whoever they are and wherever they are. Because when you disappear as a creator, you disappear, you die. This Your work will outlive you. That’s what I truly believe. So you need to give them what is true. Because everything that you put on screen, that’s your life.
Rewatching “A Dry White Season,” I felt a lot of parallels to things happening in the world today. What do you think audiences today might take from this film?
A decade after that film I did “Ruby Bridges” and I made that film for the same reason, because it was a true story. When they approached me to do it, I couldn’t say no. Disney was producing it, and I was very worried that they might not give me the freedom that I needed to really do the movie as it happened in real life. I was very worried about that, but they gave me everything I needed. They didn’t remove one frame of the film when I delivered my director’s cut. Recently there was a woman in Texas who wanted them to take “Ruby Bridges” out of schools. And you see how people reacted, white ones, Black ones, they reacted. They said, “No! Go to the internet and you will see the real thing in black and white.”
So today, I truly believe, when people see “A Dry White Season,” it will affect them. In France, for example, kids came to me, teenagers who were fifteen or sixteen, who wanted to meet with me and tell me after seeing my movie they decided to go to Amnesty International and register. They said, “We did it because we need to fight that.” In America, I know that some white folks who saw my film, told me that the person who walked in to see “A Dry White Season,” was not there anymore. They walked out a new person. I said to them, “But have similar inequalities in your city. It is not as extreme today, but you still have it going on. Maybe you will do something about it. “
I had never seen “Siméon” before, and it’s such a vibrant, playful film, and very different from “A Dry White Season.” It’s such a beautiful love letter to your home country. Where did that whole story come from, and since it rarely screens in the United States, what are your hopes for this screening?
I wish we could have a real release of “Siméon” in this country. There was a film festival in the Caribbean a few years ago, just before COVID. They screened “Sugar Cane Alley” and “Simeon,” and I’m telling you, the theater was packed. People were asking if we could have another screening. But they couldn’t, unfortunately, and I was leaving. “Simeon” hasn’t aged. That movie is just as vibrant today. Miles Davis had fallen in love with Kassav, the band featured in the film, and called his guitarist Marcus Miller and said, “Listen to that, dude.” And he said, “I’m telling you, in a few years, the bands that will survive are Prince and Kassav.” They never came to Los Angeles, but they went to New York and they loved their music there. “Siméon,” I’m telling you, is timeless. And my dream, my dream is to be able one day have a proper release of that movie.
It’s a really fun one. It’s rife with folklore–were you building on stories you’d heard from your childhood?
Yes. “Sugar Cane Alley” and “Siméon” both are inspired by my childhood. In my life, when I talk to people, sometimes I tell one of my stories to them and they crack up and say, “Write it down! Write it down!” So, Siméon is filled with folktales, absolutely. So I must tell you why I made “A Dry White Season” after “Sugar Cane Alley.” It is not a comedy. It’s a very poignant story and you laugh and you cry because it’s about life, about misery, about struggle. There are a lot of human universal values in those movies. That’s why, even if the characters are Black, the story is very universal. The first distributor of “Sugar Cane Alley” was Japanese. They bought it out of the Venice Film Festival. Just after they gave out the award winners, the Japanese bought the film. A few hours later, it was the Americans. There’s universal themes in all of my movies, and anyone can watch a film that I made and find a connection with their culture.
So, I had to do “Siméon,” or something like it, because when I came out of “A Dry White Season,” I was broken. I was absolutely emotionally broken because I knew that I was dealing with the truth, and I saw so much footage, not fiction, real footage of these atrocities. Can you believe these people? I saw white folks in South Africa when I went to a district where a Black person was married to a white person, and they would use the tools you use to cut the trunks of trees, and use it in the middle of the night, break into homes and cut the couples into pieces, to punish them. I saw so many horrible things. I was gone. I would be crying. I had a nervous breakdown.
Afterwards, my friend Francis Ford Coppola invited me to visit his set, where he was filming the third “Godfather.” On the plane to Italy to visit him something happened to me. Don’t ask me why, but something just happened. In my head, I started to hear music. My muse came back, and said, “Hey, girl, wake up and grab a piece of paper and write.” And you know what I did? You know when you fly on a plane they have those little bags if you feel like vomiting? I asked for a ton of them. I said I had an idea and I didn’t want to lose it. So the flight attendant gave me a ton of them. And I wrote everything that came to my mind, the little girl, the old man, everything that came to my mind.
Then I felt a little bit liberated, you know? And then I went to Francis’ set and we talked. I think that I spent something like two or three days with him, and then I went back to Paris, and I started to write the story of “Siméon.” It was like therapy for me, okay?
People when they see “Siméon,” they come out with a little smile on their face. They say “Siméon” is a treatment against morosity. It’s a cure if you are sad or depressed. When I screen that movie, during the end of the movie, people dance. They grab their women, they grab their girls, they grab their man, and all they dance along. They stay in the theater and they dance. You see, they are so happy. I’ve done this at a few screenings, I will sneak in the dark for the last five minutes and I wait. Everybody dances, they do that everywhere. That was the impact that “Siméon,” has on people. And I can understand it because by making “Siméon,” I healed myself, you see, and that’s why I say that, with my camera, I don’t shoot, I heal.
I’m trying to heal the wounds created by history. When I talk about Black folks, I say that I’m not lecturing people, but I do show things, and that’s it. And people, they feel better because they are represented. Black folks are seeing themselves on screen. It’s like when you see old movies about the Native Americans. White people stole their land and killed many of them, but they portray them in movies like savages, even though they are the savages. They are the killers and the bastards. But when you see somebody making a movie to re-establish the truth, and showing you the true face of the Native American people, their culture, how they lived, that will make you feel good, and that will certainly make those people and the new generation feel a bit better.
In your Oscar speech, you talk about the generations of Black women who were inspired by your films like Gina Prince-Bythewood and Kasi Lemmons, and now they’re inspiring another generation of younger Black women who are making films. Do you have any advice you’d like to impart on this next generation Black women who are making films?
I will give them the same advice that I give to anyone in this new generation, as well the one after them. First of all, it’s a very tough job, and you need to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you really love the job and are you a good fit for the job? Because in order to do the job, you need to really believe strongly in yourself. Have faith in yourself and in what you want to do. You also need to know why you are doing it. If you love comedy and you want to tell a great comedy story, do it! Fight for it! Never give up.
And just know that today it’s easier for you than it has been for me and has been for others. Today, just with your cellular phone, your iPhone, or whatever you can you can make a feature if you want to. You can make short films. I also say to kids, question your parents, because all telephones today have a camera. Use it. Question your grandmother. Question your grandfather. Your neighbor. Ask them. Be very, very curious. Start collecting things, you know? Because later on, when they will die, you will be able to see them and they will be still alive for you. My grandmother, Camille, she gave me all the tools that I needed to go to France and to confront people, to face any hard thing that could happen to me. She gave me all those tools to fight. And I would say other weapons too, because, you know, and I use many of them, I can be very funny, and that’s what made me who I am.
This Friday, Palcy’s films “A Dry White Season” and “Siméon” will screen at Metrograph in New York City as part of Director Fits x Metrograph: Euzhan Palcy x2, during which she will also be conversation with Director Fits‘ Hagop Kourounian.