‘Sidney’ Director Reginald Hudlin On Impact Of Sidney Poitier: “He Changed The Global Image Of Black People” – Contenders TV: Docs + Unscripted
deadline.comWhen the late Sidney Poitier embarked on a movie career in the early 1950s, he entered an industry with a history of depicting Black people in the most negative fashion.
The Birth of a Nation, the seminal 1915 silent film, had set the template – portraying African American characters as sex-crazed and subhuman. “Then Sidney Poitier comes along singlehandedly smashing decades of racist iconography and turning it all on its head,” said Reginald Hudlin, director of the Apple TV+ documentary Sidney. “Him doing it at the same time as the Civil Rights Movement is making these political gains, he changed the global image of Black people on Earth.” RELATED: Sidney Poitier: A Groundbreaking Career In Pictures Hudlin and producer Derik Murray appeared at Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted virtual event to discuss their film about the Oscar-winning star of Lilies of the Field, A Raisin in the Sun, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and many other iconic movies. “Look at the mark this man has left on this universe,” Murray marveled. “It’s extraordinary.” The film explores Poitier’s origins growing up in the Bahamas on Cat Island.
As a teenager he arrived in Miami and later headed to New York, where he got a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant and began his acting studies at the American Negro Theatre. “It’s an important takeaway in this film,” Murray said, “the fact that he was a self-made individual.” RELATED: Harry Belafonte, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry Join In Tributes To Sidney Poitier Poitier would not take roles that demeaned Black people.
And from his early days in movies, he was a force to be reckoned with. “Sidney was a person who took charge of his life and took charge of his career.
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