American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs is a feature documentary portrait of 97-year-old Chinese American writer, activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs, who looks back on her remarkable lifetime pursuit of civil rights and a radical future for all. The film, directed by Grace Lee (no relation), will have its world premiere this month at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Here's the trailer:
More on the film:
What does it mean to be an American revolutionary today? Grace Lee Boggs is a 97-year-old Chinese American woman in Detroit whose vision of revolution may surprise you. A writer, activist, and philosopher rooted for more than 70 years in the African American movement, she has devoted her life to an evolving revolution that encompasses the contradictions of America's past and its potentially radical future.I've been a longtime friend and fan of filmmaker Grace Lee. This film has been many years in the making, I can't wait to see her feature on such an amazing, inspiring hero.
The documentary film, AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY: THE EVOLUTION OF GRACE LEE BOGGS, plunges us into Boggs's lifetime of vital thinking and action, traversing the major U.S. social movements of the last century; from labor to civil rights, to Black Power, feminism, the Asian American and environmental justice movements and beyond. Boggs's constantly evolving strategy—her willingness to re-evaluate and change tactics in relation to the world shifting around her—drives the story forward. Angela Davis, Bill Moyers, Bill Ayers, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Boggs's late husband James and a host of Detroit comrades across three generations help shape this uniquely American story. As she wrestles with a Detroit in ongoing transition, contradictions of violence and non-violence, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the 1967 rebellions, and non-linear notions of time and history, Boggs emerges with an approach that is radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression or merely a protest. Revolution, Boggs says, is about something deeper within the human experience — the ability to transform oneself to transform the world.
As it kinetically unfurls an evolving life, city, and philosophy, AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY takes the viewer on a journey into the power of ideas and the necessity of expansive, imaginative thinking, as well as ongoing dialectical conversation, to propel societal change.
For those of you in Southern California, Grace Lee Boggs will be making a rare out-of-state trip from Detroit to Los Angeles for the screening of American Revolutionary, as well as a discussion and book signing on Saturday, June 15 at the Union Center for the Arts in Little Tokyo. Don't miss this opportunity! Here are some more details on the event: Grace Lee Boggs in Los Angeles.