Join filmmakers Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson for a special 16mm screening of A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde — their groundbreaking documentary about the radical Black feminist activist, academic, and poet. Lorde’s career spanned five decades and articulated some of the most important social and political visions of the century. Pittsburgh Sound + Image is thrilled to partner with Carnegie Museum of Art, The Black Unicorn Library and Archives Project, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Center for African American Poetry Poetics at University of Pittsburgh, and Third World Newsreel on this special show.
Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, A Litany for Survival covers Lorde’s life — from her childhood roots in NYC’s Harlem to her work as a poet and teacher to her battle with and eventual death from breast cancer. Griffin and Parkerson made the film over eight years in collaboration with Lorde herself, rushing to complete the film as Lorde was dying. They place Lorde at the center of the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s movement, and the struggle for lesbian and gay rights. At the heart of this documentary is Lorde’s own challenge to “envision what has not been and work with every fiber of who we are to make the reality and pursuit of that vision irresistible.”
See the full schedule on CMOA’s site. Courtesy the amazing partners on this show: “Following the screening, we will continue the conversation with a reflection and celebration, movement with Jasmine Hearn, and words with Alexis Pauline Gumbs who is in deep study with Lorde’s ever impactful life and body of work.”
