Euzhan Palcy: saluée par un Oscar d'honneur | hailed by an Honorary Oscar

Euzhan Palcy saluée par un Oscar d'honneur

L'artiste martiniquaise reçoit le 19 novembre, à Los Angeles, la statuette décernée par l'Académie des Oscars. 

The Martiniquan artist receives the honorary Academy Award Oscar statue on 19 November in Los Angeles. 

Image: Screen capture Oscars YouTube

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La réalisatrice française Euzhan Palcy, née en Martinique en 1958, est une pionnière qui a impressionné la planète cinéma dès ses débuts. Elle devient la deuxième cinéaste française, après Agnès Varda, à recevoir un Oscar d'honneur que l'Académie des Oscars lui remet le 19 novembre à Los Angeles, aux Etats-Unis.

French filmmaker Euzhan Palcy, born in Martinique in 1958, is a pioneer who left her mark on the cinema world from her very beginnings. She became the second Frenchwoman filmmaker, after Agnès Varda, to receive an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Oscars on November 19 in Los Angeles, United States.

Euzhan Palcy saluée par un Oscar d'honneur : la carrière de la cinéaste française L'artiste martiniquaise reçoit le 19 novembre, à Los Angeles, la statuette décernée par l'Académie des Oscars.  The Martiniquan artist receives the honorary Academy Award Oscar statue on 19 November in Los Angeles.

Below is a partial text of the acceptance speech. Transcribed by Beti Ellerson

Viola Davis presents the award to Euzhan Palcy

I will ask you my dear friends to bear with me because it is a great moment of emotion…Thank you dear members of the Academy Board of Governors and to everyone who came here tonight. And a special thanks to two brilliant female students who came all the way from Martinique, my native country, Erine and Salome. The school is called the Euzhan Palcy School, and I absolutely wanted to have one of the students from that school. And another high school…to be here tonight with us. Because if I make films it is for this generation and the upcoming one. And it was important that they come all this way with the support of everyone from Martinique to be here in this room, with you, with us. So they could see it and then go back home and to explain to the other kids what it is, how it was, and the people they met and how important that experience was for them.

When I look at you all friends, peers, colleagues, mentors, memory makers, I imagine an African proverb: “if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far go together.” You know in your heart, no one reaches this stage alone. And I would not be here without the wisdom and love of all those who joined me in my journey. My heart is bursting right now thinking of my grandmother Kami, of my dad Léon, of my mother Murielle, and my godmother and godfathers: Maya Angelou, Aimé Cesaire, François Truffaut. Thank you to all the mentors who encouraged me, like Robert Redford, who invited me to attend the Thank you to all the mentors who encouraged me like Robert Redford who invited me to attend the Sundance Institute Filmmakers Lab in 1985, it was there that I workshopped a Dry White Season. I thank the cast and crew of all my films, especially those of Sugar Cane Alley, the Bride of Bourbon Island, and a Dry White Season. And a very important thanks to the audiences all around the world. Without them my films will not be consider as classics today, I love you all. And I would be remiss if I did not thank the source of all my good fortunes, the Almighty God....

Comments after the acceptance speech.

Viola Davis: When you are an artist of color and you are a woman, you have to be bold, it is built into the job description because there is so much of a deficit out there and there is so many obstacles being placed on you because of your gender, race, there are biases out there, that you have to approach you work like a warrior.

Euzhan Palcy: I come from a little place like Martinique, we are not many. I did not want to be a cineaste in order to be like the others. I feel that with my films I can enrich, bring my contribution—a bit of color, I would say, in this landscape.

(Oscars, YouTube)

Introductory text:

Falila Gbadamassi

France Télévisions