Buck And The Preachera
To celebrate Black History Month, the Cinémathèque québécoise will be screening 15 iconic Blaxploitation movies. This genre, that hit its peaks in the 70s in the US, in a volatile and dissenting political, economical and social context, broke the color codes. The outdated portraits gallery which reduced Black people to servile objects is being replaced by a new esthetic of identy empowerment. This movie cycle intends to shed light on a rich and heteroclite filmography where various sub-genres intersect (action, martial arts, horror, western, drama) to disrupt the essentialist perception of Afro-American (life) experiences.Pam Grier, Tamara Dobson, Diahann Carroll, Richard Roundtree, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte are showing, to those willing to see, that Black is beautiful!
Widely regarded at the time of its release as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with a social conscience, BUCK AND THE PREACHER is an immensely satisfying Western which marked Sidney Poitier's directorial debut, as well as his first screen pairing with superstar Harry Belafonte. Poitier stars as Buck, an ex-Union Army Cavalry sergeant who becomes a scout for freed slaves heading to the Colorado frontier. Tagging along with him are his wife (Ruby Dee in a scene-stealing performance) and a Bible-thumping con artist known as the Preacher (Belafonte). Attacked by racist bounty hunters determinedto return the former slaves to a life of sharecropping in Louisiana, Buck and his followers must summon all the courage they have in order to reach their destination and help settle the Wild West.
Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier is a Bahamian-American actor and director. Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1974 and ambassador of the Bahamas, he is the first black actor and the first Bahamian to receive the Oscar for Best Actor in 1964, for his role in the film The Lillies of the Field (1963) by Ralph Nelson. Sidney Poitier played in about 50 films during his career and directed about ten.
