![]() ![]() ![]() It is a large, comfortable, wood-paneled space dominated by a bronze statue of the Greek god of time, Chronos a large, ornate grandfather clock a nearly life-sized portrait of Theodore Roosevelt (hidden for the evening by a movie screen that descended effortlessly from a trap in the ceiling) and a grand ornamental fireplace on which squats a glum bust of none other than John Harvard himself. Strain’s documentary had just been screened to a full and eager crowd in the Thompson Room of Harvard University’s lovely Barker Center. ![]() Standing next to Tracy Heather Strain, director of the remarkable 2018 film Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, the first feature-length documentary of the life and work of Lorraine Hansberry, author of the groundbreaking 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, I found myself surprised-and a bit unnerved-by the moment’s many contradictions. I hope that I can be forgiven for having been so nervous. Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, New York, May 1964. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Write about our people: tell their story. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking-but write to a point. Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be-if there is to be a world. ![]()
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