#Steve_McQueen and the Dutch
▻http://africasacountry.com/steve-mcqueen-and-the-dutch
The Best Picture win for #12_Years_a_Slave in the 2014 Academy Awards last weekend has not gone by unnoticed in the Netherlands. Not because of the thematic of the film but because ‘our Steve McQueen’–as the Dutch now call him–lives in Amsterdam together with his Dutch wife, journalist Bianca Stigter. So that makes […]
Twelve Years a Slave: the astonishing book that inspired my film
▻http://www.theguardian.com/culture/shortcuts/2013/dec/02/twelve-years-a-slave-book-inspired-film-solomon-northup
Finally, I had the idea of a free man kidnapped into bondage, but that’s all I had. I was attracted to a story that had a main character any viewer could identify with, a free man who is captured and held against his will. For months I was trying to build a story around this beginning but not having great success until my partner Bianca Stigter, a historian, suggested that I take a look at true accounts of slavery. Within days of beginning our research, Bianca had unearthed Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup.
“I think I’ve got it,” she said. If ever there was an understatement. The book blew both our minds: the epic range, the details, the adventure, the horror, and the humanity. It read like a film script, ready to be shot. I could not believe that I had never heard of this book. It felt as important as Anne Frank’s diary, only published nearly a hundred years before.
#histoire #esclavage #États-Unis
►http://www.entremonde.net/client/gfx/photos/produit/16RUPTURE2_47.jpg
