Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart

A magnificent tribute to Lorraine Hansberry’s life and career as an essayist, journalist and playwright, and fearless advocate for social justice, the American Masters documentary Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart sensitively mines her rich archive of writing, diaries, letters, and personal effects. The result is an intimate and powerful portrait of an innovative artist and radical activist. In Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart we meet a gracious but fierce African American playwright with a deep commitment to the productive entanglement of art and politics, gender and racial justice. We journey with her through one of America’s most pernicious periods of white supremacy and through the crucible of one of its greatest moments of social transformation. The film documents the impact of Lorraine Hansberry’s essays, plays, and activism on American cultural and social life, especially in the American theater, and most especially for black writers, directors, and actors. Honoring Hansberry’s life as a radical artist and activist whose plays, speeches, and essays spoke truth to power through whatever platform or occasion, the film acknowledges Hansberry’s commitment to gender equality and sexual freedom in her relationships, in her art, and in her politics. The reach of Hansberry’s radical example secures her status as a giant of 20th-century art and culture. For its testament to Lorraine Hansberry’s life and homage to her work, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart is recognized with a Peabody Award.