Filmmaker Euzhan Palcy—A Palette Of Passion

American Visions, August, 2000 by Karani Marcia Leslie

When she was 14 years old, Euzhan Palcy made her first movie by creating a shadow-play device--a derivative of the hand shadows that children cast on walls. She cut out figures from a roll of paper then shone a light through the cutouts, creating shadows, which told the story. That childhood dream of becoming a filmmaker has taken Palcy from Martinique to Paris to Hollywood. By age 22, she had become one of the most influential filmmakers in the world.

Her achievements have been stellar. Critics at The Black Scholar, The New York Times and The Washington Post have showered her with accolades. "Mesmerizing," "gifted," "captivating," "marvelous," "splendid," "miracle worker" and "genius" are some of the terms that have been used to describe her. Sugar Cane Alley (her first major release and the one with which, at age 22, she made her mark) won 17 international awards, including the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion and France's Cesar Award for Best First Feature Film.

Her second film, A Dry White Season, which took on the atrocities of apartheid, brought her more recognition, earned an Academy Award for Marion Brando, and so upset the government of South Africa that it was initially banned from the country's theaters. This project also secured Palcy's place in history as the first black woman to direct a film for a major American studio. In 1997, a movie theater in Amiens, France, was named Cinema Euzhan Palcy in her honor. She was awarded the Chevalier dans l'Ordre National du Merit (Knight in the National Order of Merit) by French

President Frangois Mitterand. At the debut of her 1998 television film for Disney, The Ruby Bridges Story, President Clinton presented the introduction.

Although she is aware that in a world of sound bites and tabloids, hers has not become a household name, Palcy is proud of the recognition she has received. "People come to me and they say, `You're wonderful, your work is so good, we love you,'" she says. "But the best compliment ever given to me came from one of my own, who simply said, `I saw your work and it changed me.'

"Not everyone can be a filmmaker, so I feel that filmmakers have a responsibility. We can change things. We can show people a situation--shed light on it without preaching. Sugar Cane Alley and A Dry White Season are very different films, but they both share the element of resistance to oppression. For that reason, I am considered political. Yes, I am political, because I'm not insensitive to the misery and sufferings of people. Sexism, racism--I am passionately against those things. But people typecast me, and there is another side to me."

Palcy was born in 1955 in the French overseas department of Martinique, an island in the West Indies. It was within this complex paradise that her sense of identity and purpose, as well as her love of film, was nurtured. "I don't know if I would be a filmmaker, or an artist, if I had not been born there," she says. "It's so beautiful. All the flowers, and the mixture of cultures, blend so nicely. But it's been the people of Martinique who have had the greatest influence upon my films. The people stress education of all kinds. They stress values--respect for elders, integrity. All of this you see in my movies. I am a modern woman, steeped in my history and culture."

Growing up in a bustling household with five other children made privacy hard to come by, but Palcy often finished her chores and escaped to her room, where she wrote incessantly. Her mother, a homemaker, and her father, a personnel manager in a pineapple-processing plant, both supported their daughter's creativity. Many nights when Palcy's father returned home from work, he would listen to her poetry. It was her mother who brought home Martinican writer Joseph Zobel's autobiography, Black Shack Alley, which years later inspired Palcy's first feature film.

Every Sunday, after attending Mass, Palcy accompanied her family to the cinema. There she watched, among other things, all of the old black-and-white films made by Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock. She was intrigued by the acting, but also was curious about how the pictures were shot. She felt anger at the portrayal of blacks in movies from the United States and felt compelled to change that. More than anything, however, the power of the images attracted her to the medium. By age 10, she was determined to become a filmmaker.

At age 17, she not only had distinguished herself as a popular mystery writer for a monthly publication in Martinique, but also had written, directed and acted in a drama, La Messagere, for the island's television station. She left the West Indies to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she received master's degrees in theater and in French literature, and a postgraduate diploma in art and archeology. She also received a film degree (director of photography) from the renowned Louis Lumiere School of Cinema.

Paris was a place of encounter for Palcy. She frequented the cinema club, where she discovered the films of African filmmakers, such as Ousmane Sembene. She also met African students and began to explore the similarities between their cultures and her own. She wrote, produced and directed a comedy short titled The Devil's Workshop. As the only woman--black or white-making films in Paris at the Sorbonne, her presence was noticed.