Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
Directed by Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson
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.
Reviews
Like 2016’s “I Am Not Your Negro,” Raoul Peck’s film about James Baldwin’s final, unfinished tome, “Going to Mars” responds creatively to the call of its ingenious subject.
Simply Majestic. A masterpiece. A journey through the mind of brilliance.
An uptempo documentary that matches the poet’s idiosyncratic personality.
Going to Mars acts as an invitation to read more of Giovanni’s poetry. It becomes a conduit for her writing––itself a conduit for her thoughts on society, culture, community, violence, and much more.
Fierce, funny and captivating to watch.
