I think a lot of times people in the past may have felt nervous about playing a slave because so many of the narratives told in film and television about slavery are about powerlessness and this is not a film about that. This is a film about a black man who finds his freedom and rescues his wife—he is an agent of his own power, he’s a liberator, he’s a hero. And so there’s nothing shameful about that; it’s really inspiring and hopeful. I was very moved by the love story, especially at a time in our history when black people were not allowed to fall in love and get married because marriage, that kind of connection, got in the way of the selling of human beings. So to have a story between a husband and a wife at a time when black people were not allowed to be husband and wife, was not only educational but again, hopeful. We’ve seen this love story a million times about star-crossed lovers—its just that they don’t come from two different Italian families like Romeo and Juliet, the thing that stands in the way of them being with each other is the institution of slavery. So Django is out to get his woman. I said to Quentin in our first meeting that I want to do this movie for my father because my father grew up in a world where there were no black super heroes and that’s what this movie is.
| via: freecocaine / source: Blackbook | 4 months ago with 2,184 notes |
