NEW YORK (AP) – In 1963, Sidney Poitier made a film in Arizona, “Lilies of the Field”. The performance led to a major milestone: he became the first Black winner of a leading actor Oscar.
Now Arizona is the site of another milestone in the career of the legendary actor and filmmaker – Arizona State University named his new film school after him. The new American film school Sidney Poitier was revealed at a virtual ceremony on Monday.
The decision to name the school after Poitier, 93, is much more than his accomplishments and legacy, but because he “incorporates in his own person what we strive to be – the combination of excellence and drive and passion with purpose social and social results, all the things that your career really represented, ”said Michael M. Crow, president of the university.
“You are looking for an icon, a person who embodies everything you represent,” said Crow in a previous interview. “With Sidney Poitier, it’s his creative energy, his dynamism, his motivation, his ambition, the types of projects he has worked on, the ways in which he has advanced his life.”
“Look at his life: it’s the story of a person who found a way,” he said of the actor, who was born in Miami and raised in the Bahamas, the son of tomato growers, before starting a career that from an early age, hard-won plays for Hollywood stardom. “How do we help other young people to find their way?”
The university, which is expanding its existing film program at its own school, says it has invested millions of dollars in technology to create what it aims to be one of the largest, most accessible and most diverse schools of cinema. Crow said that, like the larger university, the film school will measure success not by exclusivity, but by inclusion.
By expanding his physical resources and flexible learning options, such as online study, he hopes to enroll thousands of other students, teaching them skills that go well beyond traditional filmmaking.
The school will be moved in the fall of 2022 to a new facility in downtown Mesa, Arizona, seven miles from the university’s Tempe Campus. It will also occupy the new university center in Los Angeles.
The university did not make Poitier available for an interview, which has been out of the public eye for some time. Her daughter Beverly Poitier-Henderson told The Associated Press that her father was “doing well and enjoying his family”, and considered it an honor to be the namesake of the new film school.
Poitier-Henderson and two of Poitier’s other daughters described in interviews how the film school’s emphasis on inclusion and access aligned with their father’s long-standing ideals.
“If you have my father’s name, you have to be inclusive, because that is the basis of who he is and what he stands for,” said Anika Poitier, as her filmmaker father. “And it is important not only to be inclusive, but also to be diverse and to give people the opportunity to tell their stories. I think it is essential to launch a wide network and allow anyone called to tell their story to learn how to do that. “
Sydney Poitier Heartsong, the actor’s youngest daughter, noted that the two things most important to her father as she grew up were education and the arts.
“These are the two tracks that run through his life, which define what he contributed and defined what he felt was important to transmit to his children,” she said. “The arts were also a form of education. He wanted to convey this to all young people, but specifically to young people of color ”.
Poitier Heartsong, who followed in his father’s footsteps to act, added that the new school had special resonance at a time when “we have come to recognize that from a socioeconomic point of view, many (elite) schools exclude people of color disproportionately – and people with no means to go to them. This is the antithesis of what my father would like to be a part of. “
And she noticed that at the height of Poitier, when he won his Oscar, one of her biggest complaints was that “he was the only one up there, and he wanted others to be with him. Well, others can’t be there with him if they don’t have access to these tools and information. It is not the way the world works today. “
ASU’s film production programs now enroll 700 students, said Steven Tepper, dean of the Herberger Institute of Design and Arts, but that number is expected to double in three to five years.
“I just hope that the students at Sidney Poitier Film School will assume the mantle of responsibility in the same way that our father assumed when he was starting his career,” said Poitier-Henderson, “and tell your stories, regardless of finances, which is easy for tell us. But you have to be true to yourself. It is a very powerful thing and I am looking forward to seeing who comes out of it. ”
Appearing with a message of congratulations at the virtual inauguration was Poitier’s longtime friend, Harry Belafonte, who called Poitier “a dear human being and a wonderful American citizen”.