Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist

Last updated

Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist
Directed by Saul J. Turell
Written bySaul J. Turell
Produced byJessica Berman
Saul J. Turell [1]
Starring Paul Robeson
Sidney Poitier
Narrated by Sidney Poitier
Edited byDonald P. Finamore
Distributed by Janus Films
Release date
  • 1979 (1979)
Running time
30 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist is a 1979 American short documentary film directed by Saul J. Turell. [2] In 1980, it won an Oscar at the 52nd Academy Awards for Documentary Short Subject. [3] It was released alongside Robeson's other films on a Criterion Collection box set in 2007. [4] [5]

Contents

Plot

Production

The film was directed by Saul J. Turell, a filmmaker most well known for his work in preservation, distribution, and celebration of older films through his work in the companies Sterling Films and Janus Films. [6] Turell had decided to create the film after feeling a frustration that Robeson was so little known in the 1970's. Following research, he decided to focus on the changing meaning and lyrics of Robeson's performances "Ol' Man River" as a guiding point for the story. [7]

Cast

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Demme</span> American filmmaker (1944–2017)

Robert Jonathan Demme was an American filmmaker, whose career directing, producing, and screenwriting spanned more than 30 years and 70 feature films, documentaries, and television productions. He was an Academy Award and a Directors Guild of America Award winner, and received nominations for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three Independent Spirit Awards.

Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.

<i>The War Room</i> 1993 American film

The War Room is a 1993 American documentary film about Bill Clinton's campaign for President of the United States during the 1992 United States presidential election. Directed by Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, the film was released on December 5, 1993. It was eventually nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">D. A. Pennebaker</span> American documentary filmmaker (1925–2019)

Donn Alan Pennebaker was an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of direct cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award. Pennebaker was called by The Independent as "arguably the pre-eminent chronicler of Sixties counterculture".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saul Bass</span> American graphic designer

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and Oscar-winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion-picture title sequences, film posters, and corporate logos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Criterion Collection</span> American home video distribution company

The Criterion Collection, Inc. is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A de facto subsidiary of arthouse film distributor Janus Films, Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinephiles and public and academic libraries. Criterion has helped to standardize certain aspects of home-video releases such as film restoration, the letterboxing format for widescreen films and the inclusion of bonus features such as scholarly essays and documentary content about the films and filmmakers. Criterion most notably pioneered the use of commentary tracks. Criterion has produced and distributed more than 1,000 special editions of its films in VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray formats and box sets. These films and their special features are also available via The Criterion Channel, an online streaming service that the company operates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janus Films</span> American film distributor

Janus Films is an American film distribution company. The distributor is credited with introducing numerous films, now considered masterpieces of world cinema, to American audiences, including the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sergei Eisenstein, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, François Truffaut, Yasujirō Ozu and many other well-regarded directors. Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) was the film responsible for the company's initial growth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Greaves</span> American documentary filmmaker

William Garfield Greaves was an American documentary filmmaker and a pioneer of film-making. After trying his hand at acting, he became a filmmaker who produced more than two hundred documentary films, and wrote and directed more than half of these. Greaves garnered many accolades for his work, including four Emmy nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Les Blank</span> American documentary filmmaker

Les Blank was an American documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of American traditional musicians.

<i>Paris Is Burning</i> (film) 1990 film by Jennie Livingston

Paris Is Burning is a 1990 American documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it.

Show Boat is a 1936 American romantic musical film directed by James Whale, based on the 1927 musical of the same name by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, which in turn was adapted from the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber.

<i>The Times of Harvey Milk</i> 1984 American film

The Times of Harvey Milk is a 1984 American documentary film that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The film was directed by Rob Epstein, produced by Richard Schmiechen, and narrated by Harvey Fierstein, with an original score by Mark Isham.

Saul J. Turell was a producer and maker of documentaries, and a distributor for classic film. He founded Sterling Films in 1946. In the early sixties, Sterling Films merged with the Walter Reade Organization, becoming Reade-Sterling, of which Turell was president.

<i>Overlord</i> (1975 film) 1975 British film

Overlord is a 1975 black-and-white British war film written and directed by Stuart Cooper. Set during the Second World War, around the D-Day invasion, the film is about a young British soldier's experiences and his meditations on being part of the war machinery, including his premonitions of death. The film won the Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival. “Overlord is not about military heroics; on the contrary, it is about the bleakness of sacrifice”, Cooper said.

<i>Kings of the Road</i> 1976 film

Kings of the Road is a 1976 German road movie directed by Wim Wenders. It was the third part of Wenders' "Road Movie trilogy" which included Alice in the Cities (1974) and The Wrong Move (1975). It was the unanimous winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.

The animated documentary is a moving image form that combines animation and documentary. This form should not be confused with documentaries about movie and TV animation history that feature excerpts.

Native Land is a 1942 docudrama film directed by Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand.

The Song of the Rivers is a 1954 documentary film production by the East Germany film studio DEFA. Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens was the leading director. The sprawling film celebrates international workers movements along six major rivers: the Volga, Mississippi, Ganges, Nile, Amazon and the Yangtze. Shot in many countries by different film crews, and later edited by Ivens, Song of the Rivers begins with a lyrical montage of landscapes and laborers and proceeds to glorify labor and modern industrial machinery. The musical score is by Dmitri Shostakovich, with lyrics written by Bertolt Brecht, and songs performed by German communism's star Ernst Busch and famous American actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson who also narrates. Song of the Rivers is an ode to international solidarity.

<i>Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese</i> 2019 film directed by Martin Scorsese

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is a 2019 American pseudo-documentary film, composed of both fictional and non-fictional material, covering Bob Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour. Directed by Martin Scorsese, it is the director's second film on Bob Dylan, following 2005's No Direction Home. The bulk of Rolling Thunder Revue is compiled of outtakes from Dylan's 1978 film Renaldo and Clara, which was filmed in conjunction with the tour.

<i>Time</i> (2020 film) 2020 American film

Time is an Academy Award-nominated 2020 American documentary film produced and directed by Garrett Bradley. It follows Sibil Fox Richardson and her fight for the release of her husband, Rob, who was serving a 60-year prison sentence for engaging in an armed bank robbery.

References

  1. William Shatner and Persis Khambatta present Documentary Oscars in 1980-Oscars on YouTube
  2. Criterion Channel
  3. 1980|Oscars.org
  4. Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist|The Criterion Collection
  5. Amazon.com: Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist (Body and Soul / Borderline / The Emperor Jones / Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist / Sanders of the River / Jericho / The Proud Valley / Native Land) (The Criterion Collection)
  6. "Saul Turrell, award-winning film producer, dead at 65". The Reporter Dispatch. April 12, 1986. Archived from the original on June 3, 2024.
  7. Perelson, Jacqueline (April 27, 1980). "Oscar-winning filmmaker 'honors' Paul Robseon". Tarrytown Daily News. Archived from the original on June 3, 2024. Retrieved June 3, 2024.