English film director, producer, screenwriter and visual artist Steve McQueen, who was the first black director to win Hollywood’s “Best Picture” Oscar last March for his compelling slavery drama 12 Years A Slave, has announced that his next film will tell the story of the legendary African-American actor, singer and intrepid activist Paul Robeson. The son of an escaped slave, the charismatic Robeson had a decades-long and globally appreciated acting and singing career while, all the while, campaigning against racial and social injustice wherever he found it. He performed, notably, for loyalist soldiers in the Spanish civil war, at anti-Nazi demonstrations and was heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Teaming up with McQueen will be Robeson’s longtime friend and contemporary, 87-year-old Harry Belafonte, who grew up in Jamaica and first met Robeson and other activists in Harlem at New York’s black left-wing basement playhouse, the American Negro Theater, where Belafonte said of Robeson: “I knew I’d found my role model.” The boundary-breaking McQueen did not reveal who would portray Robeson or other casting details, nor did he announce Belafonte’s exact role in the production or the projected release date.

— Gary Von Tersch