The 2011 Sundance Film Festival got launched with the screening of Susanne Rostock’s Sing Your Song, which views the extraordinary career of entertainer Harry Belafonte through the prism of his tireless social activism.

The film shows Mr Belafonte’s example of engaging with the world’s problems and searching for solutions no matter how long-range they may be.

Mr Belafonte put his considerable weight behind the project, his daughter is among the producers, and he is the source for many of its rich anecdotes so the film teeters on the brink of hagiography.

Mr Belafonte studied drama with the likes of Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Tony Curtis and Rod Steiger. Paul Robeson visited him backstage after a performance at New York’s Village Vanguard to urge him to get people “to sing your song and they will want to know who you are.”

He has won Grammy, Tony and Emmy Awards but has walked away from lucrative gigs that would have compromised his stance against racism.

The film employs excellent archival footage as Rostock races from one major political confrontation or crises to the next. The pace is almost frantic and younger people may not always understand the back stories to many of these battles for equality and liberty.

Mr Belafonte’s many thoughts and reflections focus outwardly throughout the movie.