The Martian Chronicler
by Hart Fowler
Nikki Giovanni is ready for liftoff to familiar and unfamiliar places with the recent release of a documentary about her life. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project won top-prize at Sundance. That qualifies the film, which was also recently acquired by HBO Documentary Films, for the Oscar race. The poet has called the New River Valley home for over forty years. And now, at 80, Nikki is ready for interplanetary travel.
Documentary filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson spent seven years on Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, and came back with an intimate look into the life into an extraordinary person, poet, activist, celebrity, and retired local professor of English that one might see in the produce section of our local grocery.
To hear her read her poems aloud from her 20s to today in the footage gathered by the filmmakers brings Giovanni alive in full color and black and white reminding the power of the spoken word poem and The Movement. She wrote her experience on the notepad, then to typewriter, then to book, and now to mainstream commercial film.
Giovanni has once again shared herself for the whole world, much as she shared her creative energy with so many by choosing the New River Valley and Virginia Tech to be her home. She chose the Lyric to be the first public theater to officially release the film, and on Thursday, November 16, greeted the audience, watched the film with friends and family, and answered questions after the viewing.
This is my third time trying to see what I didn’t have anything to do with, the film that I finally I just had to say yes to, and they did it and I got out of the way because it’s very hard to see yourself on screen. You’re not used to seeing yourself. You’re not used to your own face, and things like that.
Lyric Theater Nov 16 2023
You’re just not used to it so it’s a pleasure to have so many of my friends and people that I know here. And I want to thank Blacksburg for being our community.
My mother moved here with me years ago, and she has passed and she would be thrilled to be right here. She ’d have a beer and she would be right here with us so thank you, very much.
This first appeared in Print Issue #44 released Dec 2023.
