Presented as part of Out of the Archive: Envisioning Blackness

Arrive hungry at 6:15 for a pre-screening meal catered by Sugapeach.

Featuring a virtual Q&A with Director Tracy Heather Strain

FREE Screening!

"A work that thoughtfully and creatively layers ideas about gender and sexuality alongside race."—Sarah Fonseca, Autostraddle

Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is rightly recognized as a groundbreaking work of art, but the timely story of the author's life is far less known. This in-depth look at the activist and playwright uses her personal papers and archives, including home movies and rare photos, as source material. Family, friends and colleagues, including Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, her sister Mamie Hansberry, Lloyd Richards, Amiri Baraka and Louis Gossett, Jr., share their personal memories, offering an intimate look at a woman who was, as Poitier says in the film, “reaching into the essence of who we were, who we are, and where we came from.”

Narrated by acclaimed actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson (The Fighting Temptations) and featuring the voice of Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls) as Hansberry, the documentary portrays the writer’s lifetime commitment to fighting injustice and how she found her way to art—the theater—as her medium for activism at a crucial time for Black civil rights.We also delve into Hansberry’s concealed identity as a lesbian and the themes of sexual orientation and societal norms in her works. As the writer herself said, “one cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know or react to the miseries which afflict this world.”

This program is supported by Humanities Iowa. The views and opinions expressed by this program do not necessarily reflect those of Humanities Iowa.