Coming to PBS’s American Masters tomorrow, Friday, February 7: ALICE WALKER: BEAUTY IN TRUTH
Pratibha Parmar’s portrait of the author and activist had its world premiere at London’s Women of the World Festival last year. It has gone on to screen at Seattle, Frameline, Outfest, Chicago, Athena, St Louis, Vancouver, African Diaspora, Bronze Lens, Mill Valley, Inside Out, and Napa Valley, among others.
Famously known as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE COLOR PURPLE – the first African American woman to win the award – Walker has been a friend and collaborator of Parmar for several years, producing the latter’s acclaimed 1993 documentary WARRIOR MARKS, and together co-authoring the book of the same name. Parmar’s latest film is a celebration of Walker’s life and career, not only as a writer, but also as a passionate political and human rights activist, tracing her beginnings as the daughter of Georgia sharecroppers under Jim Crow, and revealing how education, spurred on by her mother, gave her the opportunity to develop her voice as a writer while simultaneously becoming involved in the civil rights movement. With an intimacy borne of their long friendship, Walker candidly addresses a range of topics, including controversies that erupted around her work, relationships, sexual identity, and family, but Parmar never loses sight of the primacy of her subject’s written work and of her inspirational, iconic, place in America’s literary world.
what (not) to doc 