Martinican director Euzhan Palcy received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement

During a gala evening on Saturday evening in Los Angeles where the All-Hollywood crowded, French director Euzhan Palcy, originally from Martinique, received an honorary Oscar for all of her work, alongside other personalities from the world of cinema, including actor Michael J. Fox. The honorary Oscar pays homage “to exceptional contributions to the world of cinema or to services rendered to the academy”.Euzhan Palcy is particularly known for her film Rue Cases-Nègres, which takes place in Martinique in the 1930s and which had earned him the César for the first film in 1984. She had also been rewarded at the Venice Film Festival for this film. In 1989, she also directed Une saison blanche et sec, based on André Brink’s novel on apartheid in South Africa, with Marlon Brando in the cast, becoming “the first black woman to direct a film for a large Hollywood studio,” said the academy. “Euzhan Palcy is a pioneer whose considerable importance in international cinema is rooted in the history of the 7th art,” greeted the president of the Academy of Oscars, David Rubin, in a press release. This makes her the first West Indian to receive such an honor and the second Frenchwoman after Agnès Varda in 2017. See also on Konbini “Why did I keep silent? Because I was tired of hearing that black people and women weren’t lucrative. Let’s be serious, look at my sister [Viola Davis, ndlr] […] Right, Chadwick?” said Euzhan Palcy in particular in his acceptance speech.