Black Orpheus

“I gotta tell this story. So there’s a period in which Prince and I became cool... He says it’s one of his all-time favorite films called Black Orpheus. And he had about ten copies of Black Orpheus, which he would constantly have on loop. And eventually I got this. And of course I now know why he loves this. This won the Palme d’Or in 1959, I believe. And it’s probably one of the most beautifully shot films. Black Orpheus.”

“Just everything I'm like Orpheus...”

“Black Orpheus. I actually have this movie poster in my room. It's an incredible inspiration. It was really one of the few, may have been the only black love story that I had seen and really spurred me to I want to see more and so I come back to this movie actually a lot. So I'm glad this is the first one that I picked.”

“One of my greatest movies of all times, Black Orpheus. When we talk about Black Orpheus, one of the things we talk about, how this thing is so colorful and how it’s just literally so incredibly shot within a structure where you’re using a lot of the natural light. Another thing that I loved about Black Orpheus, and I’m also inspired by that when I perform, they call me the Carnival Man, and I think in my shows I do take a piece of Black Orpheus with the idea of how the energy of Carnival.”

“I’m going to start with my all-time favorite film, Black Orpheus, which… if you have any relatives who were around in the late ’50s, early ’60s, like my dad, you know, men of a certain generation, they all wanted to move to Brazil and marry Marpessa Dawn. So that goes in the bag.”

“Oh the movie who really confirm my desire and encourage me and make me say okay I am going to be a filmmaker. Black Orpheus. Marcel Camus. Oh gosh Marcel Camus he doesn't know what he did to me when I saw that film and I was a young girl in the Caribbean and that day the theater was packed and I would never forget it was so rare to have a movie with black characters and in positive roles. People were fighting to see that movie. I think that I saw that movie at least 50 times. Orfeu Negro. Oh...”

“Black Orpheus, special features.”

“Have you seen Black Orpheus? No, I haven’t seen it. Okay, you got to watch Black Orpheus. It’s spiritual, it’s so moving. And just really, really, really beautiful imagery. You gotta see Black Orpheus.”

“Alors ça c'est mon enfance et on a toujours envie de revoir son enfance et surtout les mythes je sais que j'avais adoré le film et c'est drôle parce que on a besoin de revoir les choses qu'on a vu dans son enfance... Un film essentiel ça vous transporte dans une autre dimension où on se sent tellement bien...”

“Black Orpheus, exquisite in every possible way. I like to watch it periodically and go, “Oh, yeah, this is what I’m in the business, to make a movie– to aspire to make a movie as good as this one day.”...”