“There’s so much acrimony, there’s so much division, we’re in our bubbles, none of us are speaking to each other. And she overcame all that with a sense of grace,” he said. She overcame so many obstacles: the Jim Crow south, a woman in a man’s world, vicious racism, raising a child when she was in near poverty, just the challenges of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. “People hopefully will take away from it inspiration-to take on the challenges of our day just she did in her day. And I think that’s something that documentary filmmakers are really frustrated historians because we want you see what was happening-and we want to see it better,” she added. “If you can see who you are and what happened, maybe more people would do things like vote.”īob Hercules also hopes Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise will affect its viewers. “We need to take you another time period to allow you to see who we are, and I think there’s something very rich about that. That material spans decades but is also immediately relevant. Hercules told me that assembling all of that information-without a narrator-required “hundreds of hours, just trying to figure that out.” Whack said. Research for the documentary began in 2011, and before its PBS debut tonight, the film has been touring festivals. It was funded through American Masters, grants from several organizations, and even a Kickstarter campaign that raised $153,000-and was necessary to complete it, including paying for the rights to footage included in the documentary. And because she participated in it, she could speak to that.” You don’t hear a black woman’s perspective on history internationally or nationally. “We were fortunate,” Whack told me. “It was really our blessing to have somebody that spanned that time period and was so well-documented, was also self-documented, and was a voice that you don’t hear. Between her own writing and speaking, there was a lot of material. Having her voice so available was possible in part because, of her seven memoirs, five had audiobooks recorded by Angelou. The documentary film, co-directed by Rita Coburn Whack and Bob Hercules, uses Maya Angelou’s words-from four exclusive interviews conducted prior to her death, but also archival interviews and other sources-to take us through her extraordinary life. She said that in writing, yes, but her expression and work didn’t end there. Maya Angelou was also a dancer, actor, and civil rights activist who worked with Dr. When I decided to speak, I had a lot to say.” In those five years, I read every book in the black school library. I do now, thanks to Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, airing tonight on PBS as part of American Masters.Īngelou’s mother’s boyfriend raped her at age seven, and as she said in one interview, “So I stopped speaking, for five years. But I did not know much about Maya Angelou. Angelou's son, Guy Johnson.Confession: I know Maya Angelou’s memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
AMERICAN MASTERS MAYA ANGELOU SERIES
The film also features a remarkable series of interviews with friends and family including President Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Common, Alfre Woodard, Cicely Tyson, Quincy Jones, Secretary Hillary Clinton, John Singleton, and Dr. From her upbringing in the Depression-era South to her work with Malcolm X in Ghana to her inaugural speech for President Bill Clinton, the film takes us on an incredible journey through the life of a true American icon. Maya Angelou by weaving her words with rare and intimate archival photographs and videos, which paint hidden moments of her exuberant life during some of America's most defining moments. Angelou's was a prolific life as a singer, dancer, activist, poet, and writer she inspired generations with lyrical modern African-American thought that pushed boundaries. Distinctly referred to as “a redwood tree, with deep roots in American culture,” icon Maya Angelou gave people the freedom to think about their history in a way they never had before.
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