What started for Martin Guigui as an attempt to learn and tell an important story that had been lost to time turned into a decades-long exploration of the award-winning filmmaker’s own approach to art.
When Sweetwater hits theaters April 14, it’ll be the culmination of not just the painstaking research and and pulling of industry teeth Guigui did over 28 years, but also of the country evolving to a place where it’s ready to embrace the film with the level of empathy the writer and director desires.
Born in Argentina and raised in New York City, Guigui first became aware of Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton in the 1990s, and he knew immediately he wanted to bring Clifton’s story of breaking the NBA’s color barrier to cinema.
“The culture that I grew up with, where I come from, my DNA, there was this global understanding that sport and music brings us together,” the 9/11 writer and director said. “Sweetwater Clifton exemplified a lot of what I believe in, what I jump out of bed to experience in life everyday.”
A member of the Harlem Globetrotters in the 1940s, Clifton was one of the best players on a team that revolutionized basketball with an entertaining, up-tempo style of play that included dunks, incredible ball-handling and a team that might have been the best in the world.
The Globetrotters twice defeated the world champion Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA, which ultimately kickstarted the New York Knicks’ pursuit of Clifton against the wishes of other league owners. In 1950, they finally pried him away from the Globetrotters, making Clifton the first Black player to sign a contract with an NBA team and spurring league-wide integration the same year.
“This is a message that says, ‘Let’s evolve. Let’s move on. Let’s learn more. Let’s do it together,” Guigui said. “And let’s make sure that we share that with as many hearts, as many souls as possible. And cinema is such a powerful medium so often misutilized. I thought, let’s also make it entertaining. I want this to have all the things that I love in life.”
But first Guigui had to find all the information necessary to make that possible.
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When he started on this journey, the internet wasn’t what it was today and the story of Sweetwater Clifton wasn’t as documented as that of Jackie Robinson and Major League Baseball. The NBA was only five years old at the time of integration and not nearly as popular as MLB of that time.
Guigui needed to find and talk to all the right people — which eventually included Red Auerbach, Wilt Chamberlain, Meadowlark Lemon and the families of Clifton, Globetrotters founder Abe Saperstein and former Knicks coach Joe Lapchick. He also had to convince the right people in film studios and production companies this was a story worth telling, and then fight to tell it how he believed it needed to be told.
All of his work over the years turned into a nearly two-hour film that brings to life some important figures in the history of basketball, and a project more special to Guigui because of the journey it took to reach the finish line.
“It was by far one of the most inspiring and fulfilling and impactful, challenging journeys that I’ve ever had in my entire life.”