Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart The Life and Work of a Treasured American Playwright
This documentary sheds valuable light on all aspects of Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, including the daunting challenge of securing investment and a venue for this production about a working class Black family, the casting process, artistic debates and finally its public reception.
The film features interviews with the play's original cast members, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Louis Gossett, Jr. and Glynn Turman, director Lloyd Richards, producer Phil Rose, supporter Harry Belafonte as well as writer Amiri Baraka along with excerpts from the 1961 Hollywood movie.
Additionally the film reveals how central feminism was to her ideas and boldly acknowledges (using her diary entries) her same gender relationships and private lesbian identity before the appearance of the gay rights movement.
Official Selection at the Toronto International Film Festival. Winner of the John O'Connor Award from the American Historical Association.
Running Time
118 mins
Year
2017
Kanopy ID
5575174
Filmmakers
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Comments (3)
Somebody should revive The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. I remember when it opened on B'way and the critics bombed it with such disrespect as though they wanted her to have failed. This is a very well developed biodoc that takes its time to tell her story. She would be in her late 80s ...Read more
Somebody should revive The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. I remember when it opened on B'way and the critics bombed it with such disrespect as though they wanted her to have failed. This is a very well developed biodoc that takes its time to tell her story. She would be in her late 80s now and who knows what contributions she would have made. But for the time she lived she made a difference that few made.
Read lessAbsolutely fantastic film--thank you so much for this wonderful work.
So glad I made the time to watch this! By the time I was reading/ watching Hansberry's work - high school circa 1970 something - her work was already being sanitized, positioned against works like "Dutchman" to show what "nice" Negroes i.e. unthreatening, undemanding Black people were ...Read more
So glad I made the time to watch this! By the time I was reading/ watching Hansberry's work - high school circa 1970 something - her work was already being sanitized, positioned against works like "Dutchman" to show what "nice" Negroes i.e. unthreatening, undemanding Black people were supposed to be like ... and certainly never a word about her anger, her lesbianism, her thoughts on gender and heteronormative behavior (that would be a whisper 10 years later) ... I know it's here that one is supposed to say, "what a loss! think of what she might have done!"
F-- that - think of what she'd already done!
Read less