Doc10 Premiere: Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. Post-screening Q&A with Directors Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson.

“The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.” The statement, taken from one of Giovanni’s most famous poems, is both the opening epigraph and the central visual metaphor for this innovative trip with the illustrious and charismatic thinker—whose revolutionary and penetrating words have given voice to decades of Civil Rights and personal struggles. Winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize, Going to Mars follows Giovanni, now in her 70s and as blunt and witty as ever, on tour around the country, while also traveling into the past, via riveting archival footage, and into the Afrofuturist outer-space realms of her poetic universe. “Through tender immersion and lyrical invention” (Indiewire), Going to Mars is a “stunning” (Chicago Reader), “eloquent and engaging” (Variety) portrait of a brilliant artist and an inspiring testament to the enduring power and resolve of Black Americans.