{"id":82005,"date":"2018-01-19T08:08:14","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T08:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/0de2709a84.nxcli.net\/0-kjasnb\/2018\/01\/19\/sighted-eyes-feeling-heart-review\/"},"modified":"2020-03-25T01:04:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T05:04:01","slug":"sighted-eyes-feeling-heart-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackfilm.com\/read\/sighted-eyes-feeling-heart-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Sighted Eyes Feeling Heart Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sighted Eyes Feeling Heart Review<\/strong>Posted by Kelisha Graves<\/p>\n

January 19, 2018<\/p>\n

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PBS American Masters will premiere Sighted Eyes | Feeling Heart<\/strong> (SEFH), a feature length documentary on the life of the iconic playwright, communist, feminist, lesbian, and outspoken trailblazer Lorraine Hansberry<\/strong> (A Raisin in the Sun).\u00a0The documentary premieres nationwide Friday, January 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS<\/u> (check local listings) and will be available to stream the following day via pbs.org\/americanmasters<\/a> and PBS apps.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Artist – Intellectual \u2013 Activist. Young \u2013 Gifted \u2013 Black.<\/p>\n

She was Negro, she was woman, and she was thoroughly irrepressible. In watching the Lorraine Hansberry documentary entitled, Sighted Eyes\/Feeling Heart, one cannot help but feel that her life ended prematurely and hastily. Yet, the literary legacy Hansberry left behind is wide enough and profound enough to give impact even beyond the grave. The profundity of her work possesses a certain alwaysness, a certain grittiness.<\/p>\n

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Lorraine Hansberry holds hands and sings with Singer Nina Simone and other activists at a pre-benefit gathering for the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in June 1963 in the home of Activist\/Singer\/Actor Theodore Bikel. Credit: Courtesy Lorraine Hansberry Properties Trust.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The daughter of wealthy African American parents, her childhood was lived out in one of the apartment buildings her father owned. Certainly, life in the \u201cghetto\u201d meant intimacy with all classes and all variety of experiences. This kind of eclectic \u201cintimacy\u201d was directly responsible for the egalitarian worldview Hansberry developed. In this way, Hansberry was a revolutionary and maintained a particular affection towards working class \u201cNegroes.\u201d It was this genre of folks that Hansberry relied upon as the reservoir of the African American experience. She concluded that most of what we could hope for would come from this \u201cbase.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hansberry\u2019s basic personality was that of a revolutionary; she was radically black and radically American. Freedom and liberation were the ethics by which she lived. Thereto, agitation and protest were the modus operandi by which freedom would be realized. When the black press was inclined toward being less leftist, Hansberry turned to playwriting as the platform through which she could best express political and social critique. Art, which she conceptualized as the spilling of one\u2019s righteous consciousness into anti-consciousness spaces, should promote thinking and feeling. Hansberry maintained that artists should write about the world as it is and as it should be. The responsibility of black artists, then, was to tell the story of black folks honestly and unashamedly.<\/p>\n

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In fact, the philosophical mood behind all of Hansberry\u2019s work was this: existential conflict. In Hansberry\u2019s view, all human beings experienced conflict about something in life. Her most famous literary and artistic product, A Raisin in the Sun, grew out of this existential realization \u2013the realization that conflict ungirded the human condition and the black experience in particular. Perhaps most fascinating about Hansberry was her attitude (lyrically and literally). Hansberry was intentionally black and she was intentional about her work being black. She believed that drama should make a larger statement about life. Negro life, she argued, could in fact be art.<\/p>\n

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Directed by Tracy Heather Strain, the Hansberry documentary is chic… tr\u00e8s chic. It is glossy and gutsy in the same way that Hansberry was. Strain applies an anti-traditional and avant-garde cinematic approach to an eclectic and worldly woman. Strain doesn\u2019t immediately jump into Hansberry\u2019s womanist existence. Rather, she begins by probing the entrepreneurial depths of Hansberry\u2019s father. The documentary\u2019s progressive is noteworthy and the film is elevated to the uppermost stratosphere by the presence of luminaries like Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones). The film is expertly directed, edited, and produced. I am convinced that it is entirely award-worthy.\u00a0The documentary is narrated by award-winning actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson and featuring the voice of Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose as Lorraine Hansberry.<\/strong> Should\u00a0Rose portray Hansberry in a feature film, she possesses all the poise and avant-gardeness necessary to do so.<\/p>\n