Completed shortly before her death, this artful documentary is a full-hearted, unequivocal celebration of the life and work of Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison. And that is entirely appropriate: while negative critical voices are largely absent from the film, they certainly weren’t absent during her career. This elegant collage of contributions – including that of Morrison herself, in archive footage and interviews recorded specifically for the film – explores her early life and her legacy as a creative and brilliant editor as well as a writer.
Patchworked in between the interviews are artworks, other views of the black American experience that informed her work. It’s an approach that nods to the format of Morrison’s revolutionary 1974 compendium of black history, The Black Book. Whether you have read everything she wrote or have never ventured into her worlds, it’s likely that the first thing you’ll do when you leave the cinema is pick up one of her novels.
