‘Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project’ Team Drew From Docs On James Baldwin And Kurt Cobain – Contenders Documentary

Fred Topel
·3 min read
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Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project centers on the poet, with Giovanni herself on screen. Co-director Joe Brewster said he did not want to do a traditional documentary or biopic, and drew inspiration from documentaries on James Baldwin and Kurt Cobain.

“We actually pitched it as I Am Not Your Negro meets Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,” Brewster said at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary.

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Co-director Michèle Stephenson added that she wanted the film to center on Giovanni, rather than other talking heads reflecting on her impact.

“Some of our visual vision and story vision came out of a bit of frustration with watching certain biographical documentaries,” Stephenson said. “We wanted to center her and her work and see everything through her voice to get a sense of how the process, the artistic poetry-making process happened.”

Brewster and Stephenson also got creative when Giovanni’s memory was limited, or she refused to talk about some parts of her past.

“She had great difficulty with memory and we use that and it’s clear,” Brewster said. “We use multiple devices to highlight that. So we like to think it’s part of the ride that we take the audience on.”

RELATED: Deadline’s Contenders Documentary – Full Coverage

Stephenson noted that any gaps in Giovanni’s firsthand recollection may have been covered by her poetry at the time.

“To Joe’s point too, it was really looking at the poetry as well to see how can we build story around there, build a deeper layers of understanding, who she is, what made her?” Stephenson said. “Being able to work with poetry is one of the most powerful mediums to engage with.”

Giovanni did not always agree to read her own poems either. Taraji P. Henson, who also joined the film as a producer, reads some of Giovanni’s poems on camera.

Producer Tommy Oliver shared the process of recruiting Henson.

“Nikki didn’t want to go back,” Oliver said. “She didn’t want to read a certain poem but it was important the film went to those places. That’s where the idea of somebody like Taraji came up. She saw the film. She was happy. She was genuinely happy to do it. It was such a lovely process where she embraced what Joe and Michèle did, the importance of Nikki in her life.”

As the title suggests, one of Giovanni’s poems, “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars)” features prominently in the film. Space took on greater meaning to Giovanni.

“She literally used space to cope as a child with a childhood which was rather traumatic,” Brewster said. “Space becomes something a little more personal. It becomes relationships with the people around us. I think that’s why the film moves people. Now we have a tangible way of experiencing what she calls space but we call love. You can actually see it and feel it as the film gets to the third act. Spoiler alert.”

Stephenson said she believes Giovanni truly wants to visit Mars. With that journey still some time away, Stephenson found she could use it as a metaphor.

“It’s really about what does it mean to be humans?” Stephenson said. “What does it mean to be earthlings, as she says? What are the barriers we must overcome to really make this journey to Mars something that’s more transformational? Beyond race, that’s really about this earth that we’re living in. How do we ground our relationships?”

Check out the panel video above.

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