On Friday, January 19, the national broadcast premier of Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, the first-ever feature documentary about Lorraine Hansberry, will be televised on PBS stations across the United States as part of their American Masters series (9pm EST on PBS; check local listings for more details).
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In September 2017, the first-ever feature documentary, Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, screened at the Toronto Film Festival; in January 2018, the film makes its television debut as part of the American Masters PBS series. Throughout 2018, the film will be joined by a number of new print biographies.
Co-presented by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust
WHEN
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Panel Discussion 6:30–8:00pm
Public Reception 8:00–9:00pm
WHERE
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd (135th St and Malcolm X Blvd), New York, NY, 10037
This is a free event but as space is limited, please RSVP here.
Seat reservations begin on Thursday March 8, 2018!
In 2016, London's National Theatre revived Lorraine Hansberry’s unfinished, ambitious drama about African politics, Les Blancs (The Whites), at the Olivier Theatre and directed by the South African Yael Farber (watch a short video trailer here).
Hansberry’s biographer, Margaret Wilkerson, says Les Blancs has plenty of relevance today as it looks at racial tensions in Africa just as the underpinnings of colonialism are starting to shift.
On April 23, 1995, as a new Fellow, Margaret Wilkerson delivered the lecture “Lorraine Hansberry: The Making of A Woman of the Theatre” to the College of Fellows of the American Theatre at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.
Dr. Wilkerson reads an excerpt from her 1995 manuscript:
Dr. Imani Perry discusses Lorraine Hansberry in Salamishah Tillet's New York Times essay, "For Lorraine Hansberry, 'A Raisin in the Sun Was Just the Start,” noting Hansberry's commitment to the ongoing project of social change:
On March 27, 2017, Georgetown University Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics presented Dreams Deferred: Crossing Continents and Cultures with ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ in celebration of World Theatre Day. The one-night event, moderated by Soyica Colbert, was in advance of the Arena Stage Mead Center for the American Theatre’s 2017 production of A Raisin in the Sun in Wahington, DC and productions in Sweden at the Riksteatern, directed by Josette Bushell-Mingo, OBE, and at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, directed by James Ngcobo.
On Thursday, March 22, 2018, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will co-present Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography. In addition to the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary, Sighted Eyes|Feeling Heart, three biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual will be published in the next several years. The four panelists will share how they navigated the feminisms, intersectionalities, political, and private-public voicings that shaped Hansberry’s life in their biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual.
Over the last two weeks we have been sharing information about the panel participants as well as information about the Lorraine Hansberry Papers, held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
On March 22, 2018, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will co-present Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography. In addition to the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary, Sighted Eyes|Feeling Heart, that aired on PBS in January 2018, three biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual will be published in the next several years. Reimagining Biography panelists will be asked to address the feminisms, intersectionalities, political, and private-public voicings that shaped Hansberry’s life and her understanding of herself and the worlds she both lived in and created.
In 2010 the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture published an article, “Young, Gifted, Black, and Complicated: The Question of Lorraine Hansberry’s Legacy,” in their newsletter, Africana Heritage. In that article, Steven G. Fullwood, then Assistant Curator, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture puts the incredible legacy of Lorraine Hansberry’s contribution as an artist, activist, public intellectual, and writer into context.
The Lorraine Hansberry Documentary Project, LLC in co-production with Independent Television Service and Black Public Media won a Peabody Award for the American Masters documentary, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, which premiered on January 19, 2018.