She will be the first\u00a0Black woman\u00a0director to\u202freceive this award. This year\u2019s\u00a0other honorees include composer Diane Warren, director Peter Weir and\u202factor Michael J. Fox,\u202fwho will receive\u202fthe Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Euzhan\u202fPalcy\u202fis a pioneering filmmaker who has led a revolutionary career of firsts, paving the way for a new era of cinema in which the voices and anger of women and\u00a0Black communities\u00a0are\u00a0heard.\u00a0She was awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest award.<\/p>\n
Notably encouraged by Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, she shot her first feature film in 1983 at the age of 24,\u00a0Sugar Cane Alley<\/em>, about Africans working on a sugar\u00a0cane\u00a0plantation in\u00a01930s Martinique. This film won a Venice Film Festival Award and a C\u00e9sar Award, making her the first Black director and woman director to win these awards. Six years later, with\u202fA Dry White Season<\/em>, which strongly denounced the racist regime in South Africa and particularly the actions of its police, she made history again by becoming the first Black woman to be produced by a major Hollywood studio. Marlon Brando was nominated for a\u00a0Best Actor Academy Award for his role in this feature.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n After making this anti-apartheid film, the only one to have been shot during the years of Nelson\u202fMandela’s\u202fimprisonment, the reaction of the South African regime was so vehement that her production company, MGM, had to hire bodyguards to protect her.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n With\u202fA Dry White Season<\/em>, her ambition was to create\u202fwhat she calls “cinema verit\u00e9,” a\u00a0method of cinematic storytelling\u00a0that does not betray\u00a0reality\u00a0and led her to travel to Soweto under a false identity to investigate the riots and interview the victims\u2014stories that have profoundly affected her. Her search for truth also led her to work with non-professional actors, whether they were sugar plantation workers in\u202fSugar Cane Alley<\/em>\u202for people who had lived through apartheid in\u202fA Dry White Season<\/em>.\u202f\u202f\u202f\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Also\u202fa documentary filmmaker, Palcy\u202fdirected\u00a0a trilogy about\u202fAim\u00e9\u202fC\u00e9saire\u202fin 1994,\u202fAim\u00e9\u202fC\u00e9saire: A Voice for History<\/em>, a\u00a0film that launched France\u2019s National Tribute to Aim\u00e9 Cesaire at the Pantheon.<\/p>\n In addition,\u202fher feature film\u202fSimeon<\/em>\u202f(1992) was part of the Cannes Classics official selection in 2013 to celebrate\u202fAim\u00e9\u202fC\u00e9saire’s\u202fcentenary of birth.\u00a0In 2006, her documentary on\u00a0Antillean resistance fighters,\u00a0Le Parcours de Dissidents<\/em>, raised awareness that triggered the beginning of a national tribute by France to these forgotten heroes.<\/p>\n She\u00a0is currently developing a new feature film project about Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to receive a pilot’s license in 1921 from the Ecole des Fr\u00e8res Caudron, in\u00a0Le Crotoy, France.\u00a0This inspiring and\u202fpioneering\u202ffigure\u202ftragically\u00a0died\u00a0in a\u202fplane\u202fcrash in 1926\u202fat the age of\u202f<\/strong>34.\u00a0<\/strong>Working closely with\u00a0Coleman’s family,\u00a0Palcy\u202fmade a\u00a0seven-minute teaser using computer animation to represent the heroic moment \u201cQueen Bess\u201d\u202fearned her license, introducing this\u00a0significant\u00a0project that has been close to her heart for a long time.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":57066,"menu_order":0,"template":"","app_discipline":[219],"app_city_tax":[220],"app_news_type":[],"class_list":["post-57068","app_news","type-app_news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","app_discipline-cinema","app_city_tax-la"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n