It’s 35 years since the release of film-maker Euzhan Palcy’s award-winning directorial debut, Sugar Cane Alley. Her adaptation of Josef Zobel’s semi-autobiographical novel, Rue cases nègres, is set on Palcy’s home island of Martinique in the 1930s and explores the legacy of the slave trade, as experienced by the central character, a young boy named José.
The first Black woman director of a Hollywood movie, Palcy went on to work with some of the biggest stars in film, including Marlon Brando, Susan Sarandon and Donald Sutherland, winning countless awards for both her cinematic and humanitarian work. She has been writer, director and producer of too many films to list. She is, she tells me, a strong believer in ‘possibility’.
