Sundance Film Festival 1995 (World Premiere Documentary)–
A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde celebrates a visionary woman, who in her life and literary work embodied the intersections among three significant social protest movements of the 196s and 1970s: the Civil Rights, the Women’s, and the Gay-Lesbian unrest (way before it was labeled Queer, or LBTQ+)
(A closeted lesbian for most of her life, Lorde married a closeted gay man and had children with him).
Lorde’s charismatic personality and her importance as a dynamic force and role model for younger generations of activists of all kinds make for an informative and enlightening non-fiction that should be broadcast on Public TV, festivals, and other venues.
The daughter of Caribbean immigrants, Lorde was born and raised in Harlem, though she was always told by her parents that “home is somewhere else.” Indeed, after attending Catholic schools–and some “messy” years by her own admission–she left Harlem because it was “too provincial” for her.
Motivated by a strong urge for self-expression, Lorde began writing poetry in high school; her first published work made more money than what she earned in the next ten years. Her early lesbian love poems were a novel audacity because, as she says, “there was no space or need for them.”
Lorde’s lesbian friends were stunned when she got married–docu doesn’t provide much info about her interracial marriage. But as expected, her children got an unconventional education. Says her son: “My mother provided us a list of things that were repugnant in society, but she also left us to our own devices.” Lorde’s lifelong challenge was to establish a “working mind” that “learns the lessons of intense contradictions and makes reality pursuit of visions irresistible.”
Her political consciousness was formed in the 1950s, during the McCarthy era and the Rosenbergs trial, but the event that changed her life was an invitation to teach at a Southern black college. Devoting her life to battling prejudice, she participated in many rallies and spoke on behalf of gay and lesbian rights at the twentieth anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington.
The greatest achievement of this feature is in illustrating the formation of a complex modern identity. Indeed, from a mainstream society perspective, Lorde was deviant par excellence, combining the contradictory roles of wife-mother, accomplished black poet, militant warrior of racism, outspoken lesbian and, at the end of her life, feisty cancer survivor.
Docu interweaves interesting archival footage, personal poetry, evocative music, and revealing conversations with her family, companions and friends. Extensive interviews with Lorde, conducted over the last years of her life, provide the core of the narrative, which is punctuated by recitations of her poetry.
In its last sequences, the film drags a bit, rehashing issues that have already been discussed elsewhere. Nonetheless, A Litany for Survival exhibits the enchanting personality of an unusual woman, considered to be in some circles as the female counterpart to such seminal figures as Malcolm X.
Credits
A Third World Newsreel production. Produced by Ada Gay Griffin. Directed by Griffin and Michelle Parkerson. Camera (color), Larry Banks, John Bentham, Michael Chin, Christine Choy, Crystal Arnette Griffith, Arthur Jafa, Herman Lew, Al Santana; editor, Holly Fisher; sound, Orinne J. T. Takagi. Reviewed at the Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 20, 1995. Running time: 90 min.
