We were excited to welcome Nikki Giovanni, Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, and Tommy Oliver to discuss their film Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project in a conversation moderated by Rachel Rosen. Following the NYFF61 premiere of the film, Nikki Giovanni also sat down with author Edwidge Danticat to discuss her life, work and participation in the Spotlight selection as a part of NYFF61 Talks.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition, this beguiling documentary portrait follows poet and activist Nikki Giovanni as she approaches 80. The film explores Giovanni’s Afrofuturist-feminist philosophical outlook as well as her poignant relationship with her family, her political audacity, and her poetic eloquence, all knit together with a constant eye and ear for its subject’s own aesthetic verve. Looking back at a personal life and history cast in the long shadow of American racism, and forward to hopeful, possible futures, Giovanni acts as our guide and narrator, with refreshingly unorthodox filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson refraining from traditional chronologies or talking-head conventions. Going to Mars is fueled by constant intellectual engagement and radical imagination in the search for emotional and political fulfillment in a world of disenfranchisement. An HBO Documentary Films release.
NYFF61 Talks and feature docimentaries are presented by HBO.
Enjoy these discussions with the team behind Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project below, and don’t forget to subscribe here for more filmmaker conversations.
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