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00:00 We now have a stunning film for you from HBO Documentary Films.
00:05 It is "Going to Mars, the Nikki Giovanni Project," directed by Michelle Stevenson and Joe Brewster,
00:13 produced by Tommy Oliver.
00:14 And they join us now.
00:15 Thanks for being with us.
00:16 Thanks, Pat.
00:17 Thanks for having us.
00:18 Thanks for having us.
00:21 This is the really stunning film about Nikki Giovanni, the poet, incisive cultural commentator
00:29 has been part of American life for many decades now.
00:32 You explore her background, her journey, her thought.
00:37 Before we get into some questions, let's take a look at a clip from the film, which really
00:41 gives us a sense both of Nikki and the visual style of your film.
00:46 I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, but I am an Earthling.
00:53 It is an honor to introduce this woman.
00:59 She is the most renowned black poet this world has ever seen.
01:00 There is no you without this goddess.
01:01 You're sort of a prophet.
01:02 I would hate to think of myself as being a prophet.
01:10 Prophets die.
01:15 I'm also a dreamer, but I don't understand why my dreams can't come true.
01:23 I will continue to do what my grandfather could not do.
01:25 I will fight.
01:26 I'm a fighter.
01:27 The history of our people is a great history, and it's our duty to tell that story.
01:36 This is not a poem.
01:39 This is an explosion.
01:41 This is a rocket.
01:45 This is a space ride.
01:53 Michelle and Joe, I think, of course, for any film, for a documentary filmmaker, you've
01:58 got to come up with a visual style that seems appropriate to the subject.
02:01 It seems particularly challenging here because you're getting into the world and the mind
02:07 of a poet.
02:08 How did you settle on a visual style?
02:11 We settled on the visual style before we even knew who the subject was.
02:17 We wanted to do less verite and stretch ourselves in a number of ways.
02:28 We knew that this was going to be a different visual take for us.
02:37 We actually pitched it as "I'm Not Your Negro" meets Kurt Cobain's "Montage of Heck."
02:47 That's fascinating.
02:51 I think there were some also self-imposed constraints.
02:57 Some of our visual vision and story vision came out of a bit of frustration with watching
03:05 certain biographical documentaries where a lot of time is spent on third person speaking
03:13 about the work or about the person.
03:15 We wanted to center her and her work and see everything through her voice to get a sense
03:21 of how the artistic poetry-making process happened.
03:27 The poems themselves and the visual treatment of the poems came out of a lot of trial and
03:33 error over the years.
03:37 We kind of had in our head the idea of wanting to do these different planes of stories, of
03:43 storytelling, but we didn't quite know where we were heading.
03:49 We knew we liked what we had when we had it.
03:52 We knew what we did like.
03:55 It took a while, but it was very exciting to see once we saw things sort of click, especially
04:02 with our editor, Tara Long.
04:03 Tommy, you're a producer on this film, also a director of "40 Years a Prisoner," a fantastic
04:09 film from just a few years ago.
04:13 For those who maybe don't know Nikki Giovanni, can you talk about her importance as a cultural
04:19 figure in America?
04:24 Nikki is one of our greats.
04:28 She and her impact on culture and her impact on what she's been able to communicate and
04:38 put into words, what the Black community, what women, what so many of us have gone through
04:45 has been unbelievable.
04:47 I grew up hearing about Nikki in school and from my grandmother and from my mother.
04:54 She's somebody who has just been an icon for as long as I can remember.
05:02 She has been her own person and she's told it exactly how she felt it in a way that cuts
05:11 to deep down into the bone.
05:15 She's been that for, again, for my entire life.
05:20 She's a truth teller.
05:23 We heard in the clip about being a prophet.
05:27 Someone called her a prophet.
05:28 She's like, "Well, I don't want to be a prophet because we don't tend to live too long."
05:33 But she's someone who I would say doesn't suffer fools.
05:39 She's kind of formidable in that moral clarity of hers.
05:45 I just wonder for Michelle and Joe what it's like being around her because she's not really
05:51 going to give you much leeway or much quarter, let's say, if you ask a question she doesn't
05:56 want to entertain or something like that.
05:59 Well, that's part of the process of filmmaking.
06:05 It's not on her to determine what the film becomes by answering a question.
06:13 It's up to us to note the obstacles that we face and tell a story using those obstacles
06:21 as part of the storytelling.
06:23 For example, she had great difficulty with memory.
06:30 We use that.
06:31 It's clear and we use multiple devices to highlight that.
06:39 We like to think it's part of the ride that we take the audience on.
06:46 I think one of the things that Joe and Michelle did so well is that, to his point, they turned
06:50 those obstacles into opportunities.
06:54 They really figured out how to tell her story in a way that was organic to her without trying
07:01 to force anything into it.
07:04 If she didn't want to go somewhere, but it was important to the story, okay.
07:08 What does that then do to the approach?
07:11 How do we figure out how to tell this thing?
07:14 Then they have a really creative idea about how to do it where it wouldn't have happened
07:19 otherwise.
07:20 It is kudos and credit to them to have leaned in as hard as they did.
07:28 Also, the great thing about Nikki is we have 50 years almost or more of her poetry, which
07:38 is often very personal.
07:41 Sometimes when she's going to say, "I don't want to answer that.
07:43 I don't want to go back in time.
07:46 It's too painful for me," it's often already in the poem.
07:51 To Joe's point, too, is that it was really looking at the poetry as well to see how can
07:56 we build story around there, build deeper layers of understanding who she is, what made
08:05 her.
08:06 It was rich from Nikki Rosa at the beginning of the film to the Martin Luther King poem.
08:14 To her poem, "I'm a Native Tennessean," it really in some ways documents her own struggles
08:24 and being able to work with poetry is actually one of the most powerful mediums for us to
08:32 engage with.
08:35 The title, of course, "Going to Mars."
08:39 Space travel, this notion is really very central.
08:43 It emerges in the film to the cosmology, if you will, of Nikki Giovanni's work.
08:50 What does that metaphor mean?
08:53 Is there some way of summing that up?
08:56 In some ways, it's a metaphor.
08:57 In other ways, it's almost a literal conception in Nikki Giovanni's mind.
09:04 I'm going to leave that to Michelle, maybe.
09:07 Let me say this.
09:11 Space means so much in this film.
09:18 She literally used space to cope as a child, with a childhood which was rather traumatic.
09:28 When you really think about the important things as you canvas her life, space becomes
09:39 something a little more personal.
09:41 It becomes relationships with the people around us.
09:46 I think that's why the film moves people.
09:49 Now we have a tangible way of experiencing what she calls space, what we call love.
09:59 You can actually see it and feel it as the film gets to the third act.
10:05 Spoiler alert.
10:06 We don't have acts, Joe.
10:07 We don't have three acts.
10:08 What is non-linear and we're collapsing time precisely with this metaphor of space.
10:22 But it's interesting, you said something, Matt, that there is also this real literal
10:27 desire of Nikki to really go to Mars and to see outer space.
10:33 Then there's the whole metaphor of what space means.
10:36 I think she was Afrofuturist before the term became popular or was even coined.
10:43 It's interesting to even go back to her poetry and see how space is sprinkled throughout.
10:49 Then going to Mars in some ways, when we contemplate this journey, it's really about what does
10:54 it mean to be human?
10:56 What does it mean for us to be earthlings, as she says?
11:01 What are the barriers we must overcome to really make this journey to Mars something
11:06 that's more transformational?
11:07 That's when she says, "We must turn to black women," because black women really
11:12 know what that means to stay human and confronted with aliens when going through the Middle
11:18 Passage.
11:20 We were really, really lucky that we fell upon this poem when she recited it and felt
11:27 like it was a beautiful container for us to tell the story that's transformational,
11:32 that's beyond race, that's really about this earth that we're living in and how
11:37 do we ground our relationships?
11:41 Just before the film premiered at Sundance, right around that time, it went on to win
11:46 the grand prize for US documentary there.
11:48 It was announced that Taraji P. Henson, an Oscar-nominated actress, would be an executive
11:54 producer and we hear her voice in the film because she reads some of Nikki's poetry.
12:01 Tommy, it's pretty special to have an actress of that caliber participate in the film.
12:08 What she brings to it is really pretty stunning.
12:11 Yeah, I think that it is special, but the film also demands and deserves it.
12:20 It was something where coming out of the constraints that we talked about, there were things that
12:25 Nikki didn't want to go back into.
12:28 She didn't want to read a certain poem, but it was important that the film went to
12:34 those places.
12:35 So, what do we do?
12:37 And that's where the idea of somebody like Taraji came up and she was at the top of our
12:41 list and she saw the film, which is an incredible film, and she was happy.
12:47 She was genuinely happy to do it and it was such a lovely process where she embraced what
12:54 Joe and Michelle did and the importance of Nikki in her life and as somebody who grew
13:00 up around these types of things as a Howard grad.
13:03 And so, it became this really lovely team effort.
13:11 And it's not hagiography.
13:14 I guess that's how you pronounce that word.
13:16 It's urban quickshot.
13:18 All right.
13:19 Thank you, Tommy.
13:21 In that, there's some areas of her life and career and thought that you go to that she
13:27 did not relish returning there, shall we say, which is one of her speaking, what she said
13:35 about apartheid during the 1980s when that was such an enormous political issue.
13:42 Why did you feel, Joe and Michelle, that was important to cover within the film?
13:49 Well, it was one of the more poignant but also difficult points in her life where she
13:58 was essentially cancelled for her position, which was a position against apartheid but
14:14 in favor of focusing on issues here at home.
14:19 And so, we think it made a real contribution.
14:24 But I would caution against seeing this as a biopic.
14:30 You know what our audience does?
14:33 Our audience surveys this life of this great poet, but many times leaving thinking about
14:44 their own lives.
14:47 And that is intentional because we add a level of complexity to the story while moving away
14:54 from telling the day-to-day incidents that happened in her life.
15:01 And that really leaves the audience room to think about the decisions that they make.
15:09 And that's what we often hear when people leave the screening room.
15:16 It's also about, again, what makes us human, right?
15:20 The hagiography and idolatry of the people that we hold dear can be a negative thing.
15:30 We want to be able to embrace the entirety of who Nikki is, understanding those differences,
15:38 not agreeing with them.
15:39 I mean, I was out there in the street.
15:41 I was in college at the time.
15:42 So, it was really hard for me to hear her arguments and how she was formulating them.
15:51 But at the same time, while there is a line to be drawn in certain moral spaces, it should
16:00 not be a factor that leads me to dismiss the entirety of her body of work, right?
16:06 The entirety of how some of her other poetry, some of her other work has actually affected
16:11 me.
16:12 And then also the vitriol, the vitriol of cancel culture was quite present back then.
16:18 In fact, she had Arthur Ashe, who was leading the anti-apartheid movement, come in step
16:26 to protect her against some of the backlash she was getting from the Black community around
16:31 her stance.
16:34 And what's interesting is we also see a little bit, it's about how can we respect each other,
16:39 right?
16:40 How can we understand a whole body of work with certain things that we don't necessarily
16:43 agree with and be able to sit in the complexity and the grayness of things because that's
16:48 what life is.
16:50 But even when we look at, there's something to be learned also in her conversations with
16:53 James Baldwin, where there are certain things that she completely disagrees with, that he
16:59 has internalized the misogyny and patriarchy in his conversations that we often don't see,
17:05 you know, because of sometimes the idolatry that goes with how we perceive potentially
17:14 James Baldwin or others.
17:16 But that disagreement, it comes with love, right?
17:20 You can sense the love that they have for each other in spite of their disagreements.
17:26 And I think that's part of how do we get to this next level of our humanity, where we
17:30 have to face these contradictions, but at the same time, understand our common humanity,
17:37 you know.
17:38 It's really a stunning film and a great tribute to her in its own way, but a real journey,
17:44 I think, for viewers.
17:45 It is "Going to Mars," the Nikki Giovanni Project.
17:48 And we have been joined by directors Michelle Stevenson and Joe Brewster and the producer
17:54 Tommy Oliver.
17:55 It is from HBO Documentary Films, again, the Nikki Giovanni Project.
18:01 Thank you so much.
18:02 Thank you, Matt.
18:03 Thank you.
18:04 Thank you.
18:04 Thank you.
18:05 Thank you.