Imagine - Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, BBC!, tonight, 28 Feb

[Stanley Stewart]

Recorder set for Imagine - Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise, BBC 1, tonight, (28 Feb '17);
22.45-00.20hrs; a portrait of the trail-blazing activist, poet and writer. Good vibes here!

[johncorrigan]

Recorder set for Imagine - Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise, BBC 1, tonight, (28 Feb '17);
22.45-00.20hrs; a portrait of the trail-blazing activist, poet and writer. Good vibes here!

Really looking forward to this, Stanley - 'I Know How the Caged Bird Sings' was such a wonderful and influential book for me. But also such a joyous human being who never ceases to raise my spirits.

[johncorrigan]

Really looking forward to this, Stanley - 'I Know How the Caged Bird Sings' was such a wonderful and influential book for me. But also such a joyous human being who never ceases to raise my spirits.

Actually, I was a bit disappointed by the doc. I thought it was quite dull. I hung on, but eventually gave up about twenty minutes from the end. I mean, there were some interesting snippets of film and good photos but it didn't stir me.

[Stanley Stewart]

Thanks, john. Sorry to hear about your disappointment as I was heartened to make a further voyage of discovery with memories stretching back to the early 50s when I came of age!

Dr Angelou's appeal to me lay in her complete lack of theatrical artifice which gave her a radiance and directness, a simplicity which most pro's would die for. A magnetic presence, too. Great performers, say, Lena Horne or Pearl Bailey, developed a technique as a safety barrier but Maya Angelou could only speak from her heart. In a scene where she was directing a documentary, she sat with her script and her eyes told me that she was in control of the shoot. Even when reading poetry, she responded directly to its meaning, totally free of vocal mannerisms. In Rudolph Laban terminology, direct and unbound. Only the best are so blessed.

Otherwise, tracing her life, the years of civil repression, alongside the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan were depicted and blood freezing to watch. I recall the enlightenement of James Baldwin's paperbacks in the 50s, Another Country and The Fire Next Time, still on my shelves. It was good to see him in the documentary. However, the highlight for me was AM's graciousness towards a loud-mouthed guest, rap singer,Afeni Shakur (?). She put her arm around him and invited him to walk around her house and told him what his colour and talent represented, free of dramatic intensity, or any indignation about his behaviour. He looked at her with tears in his eyes. Her relationships with the men in her life were more complex and short-lived. The strength of her character and the stillness at her centre must have been a formidable challenge. A remarkable feature.