Sunday Showcase: Juneteenth

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
Directed by Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster

Sunday, June 8, 4 pm CINEMA+

Free; first come, first served

“The readings of her poems will have the hairs on the back of your neck standing up.”—Cath Clarke, The Guardian

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 approached 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.  Screening in observation of Juneteenth. 2023, U.S., DCP, 101 minutes. Recommended for 16+

PRE-SCREENING at 3 PM:  Sirene Martin, Curatorial Assistant to the Native American and African Collection, will lead a tour under the theme Spirits Unveiled: A Black American Art History.

CINEMA+ With a post-screening discussion led by Dr. David Anderson, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Louisville.

Special thanks to Fannie Cox, Professor and Community Engagement Consultant & Liaison Librarian, University of Louisville Libraries for her programming assistance.