O F F-S E T
THE SIT-IN:
Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show
46
INTERVIEW WITH
Director Yoruba Richen Had you heard about Harry Belafonte hosting The Tonight Show before you became involved in the project? Like so many folks, I had not heard about this history. Part of what I love to do as a director is uncover histories that are not widely known, so it was very intriguing to me that he hosted this show and had so many luminaries of both entertainment and activism. How did you approach working out what story you wanted to tell based on the available and missing footage? Initially we thought we might do it day by day. We quickly realised that that wasn’t going to work, and so we ended up going back to the footage and mining what else was in there and then expanding upon that. It really became how Harry Belafonte and his guests saw what was
