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July 30, 2008

Danny Glover's Haiti film lacked 'white heroes', producers said

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.

Danny Glover takes part in a ceremony in Dakar
AFP PHOTO
"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.

"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. source

4 comments:

Wes said...

Nothing EVER seems to faze me these days...

Anonymous said...

I am very much looking forward to seeing this movie being made. He is a true black hero. I am not at all surprised that the movie had trouble getting funding. Whites don't want to acknowledge the wrongs that they have done in the past. Revisionist history is what works best for a guilty conscience.

Anonymous said...

I'm not surprised by the lack of support, we've heard the same story many times. No white hero, no shucking and jiving, no funds. I'm excited that he got the money to move forward with the project.

Beauty Is Diverse said...

I will be supporting this movie..

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