Bendjelloul zeroes in on two South Africans, avid rock enthusiast Stephen Segerman and music journalist Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, who joined forces to solve the mystery of what happened to Rodriguez – and, in the film’s tensest scene, what became of his royalties from record sales in South Africa. To reach that point, much detective work is required. What provides the film with much of its emotional suspense, as well as its well-earned uplift, is the fact that decades passed with Rodriguez (alive and in Detroit, making a living as a construction worker) entirely unaware of his runaway success in South Africa.Īt a brisk, well-paced 80 minutes, “Searching for Sugar Man” uses talking-head testimonies, archival footage, bits of animation, and a soundtrack of Rodriguez’s music to take us on the rather surreal journey that brought the singer face to face with the kind of adoring fans and widespread recognition he never had at home.
Consequently, Rodriguez’s growing legions of fans knew nothing about him, and a rumour somehow took hold that the musician had committed suicide onstage back in Detroit.
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The singer, with his clear, mournful voice, acoustic guitar, and fiercely anti-establishment lyrics, provided an especially fitting soundtrack for the growing movement of Afrikaner progressives fighting to end apartheid.īut there was no media coverage of Rodriguez coming out of the US, the web had not yet put the world just a finger’s click away, and an international cultural boycott isolating South Africa was in full effect. In a coincidental turn of events, the album ended up in South Africa, where it quickly became a sensation and catapulted Rodriguez into a pantheon of musical idols that included Bob Dylan and the Beatles. We learn, through interviews with music industry figures and a few Detroit locals, that in 1970, a Mexican-American singer-songwriter named Sixto Rodriguez released an album that drew declarations of genius from critics and producers alike – but the record bombed, and the artist receded into the shadows.
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Ignored in America, adored in South AfricaĬrowd-pleasing as it is, however, the movie is also a story of dashed hopes and thwarted talent. It’s no surprise the film racked up prizes at the Sundance Film Festival last winter and is now a frontrunner for the best documentary Oscar. With most of today’s documentaries tackling weighty subjects like war, disease, murder, or politics, it’s somewhat startling to discover a non-fiction film with the narrative arc of a fairytale and the feel-good vibe of a mainstream Hollywood comedy.īut that’s precisely what 35-year-old Malik Bendjelloul, who previously made several short music documentaries for Swedish TV, has come up with in “Searching for Sugar Man”. Help us understand how sugar is connected to the origins of American slavery.“Truth is stranger than fiction”, a popular saying goes, and rarely has the cliché – originally an approximation of a line from Romantic poet Lord Byron’s “Don Juan” – felt more accurate than in the nimble and engaging documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” (released in France on December 26).Įven the pitch sounds farcical: a Swedish director’s investigation into a US folk musician whose career crashed before it ever got off the ground, but who, unbeknown to him, became an icon among South Africans under the erroneous impression that he was dead. Professor Muhammad, thank you very much for being here. Louisiana, he wrote, led the nation in destroying the lives of black people in the name of economic efficiency. Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad of Harvard's Kennedy School wrote about that for The New York Times.
Specifically, we're going to look at how the production of American sugar, known as white gold, helped to fuel slavery and became ingrained in our society. We are going to focus on some of the economic legacies, including the larger connections with modern capitalism. One of the more notable efforts is The New York Times' 1619 Project, which is spotlighting parts of history that are less well-known. The 400th anniversary and the ways slavery has affected American history since then are being commemorated. It is regarded by many as the beginning of America's long relationship with slavery. Four hundred years ago this month, in August 1619, the first African slaves arrived in Virginia.