February 22 and 29, 2024
COMMEMORATING THE JAMES BALDWIN CENTENNIAL
I HEARD IT THROUGH
THE GRAPEVINE
at MOCAD ª 4454 Woodward Avenue 48201
Detroit premiere • Cinema Detroit exclusive
In I Heard It Through the Grapevine, James Baldwin retraces his time in the South during the Civil Rights Movement, reflecting on what has changed — and what hasn’t — in the more than two decades he was away.
“James Baldwin retraces his time in the South during the Civil Rights Movement with his trademark brilliance and insight… From Selma to Birmingham, Atlanta to the battleground beaches of St. Augustine, Florida, accompanied by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, and back north for a visit to Newark with Amiri Baraka, Baldwin lays bare the fiction of progress in post-Civil Rights America — wondering ‘what happened to those who did not die, but whose lives were smashed on Freedom Road.’” – Rich Blint, writer/Baldwin scholar
“A valuable reminder of the civil rights period as it retraces the pulsating panorama and some of the poignant pauses in the history of the struggle. It is more important now than it would’ve been five years ago.” – Ali Stanton, New York Amsterdam News
“An admixture of poetry and politics that is extremely well made. Baldwin (from the actual locations) offers present-day thought, poetry, and reflection. The windows of the past fill the screen and the Movement’s proud and painful lessons of heroism, sacrifice, dedication, and even death, become vividly clear.” – Charles Rogers, New York Voice
USA/UK. 1982. Restored 2023 by Harvard Film Archive.
Produced and directed by Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley.
93 min.