Directed by Dagmar Schultz

Audre Lorde’s incisive, often-angry, but always brilliant writings and speeches defined and inspired the US-American feminist, lesbian, African-American, and Women-of-Color movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Audre Lorde: the Berlin Years, 1984-1992 documents an untold chapter of Lorde’s life: her influence on the German political and cultural scene during a decade of profound social change.

It chronicles Lorde’s empowerment of Afro-German women to write and to publish, as she challenged white women to acknowledge the significance of their white privilege and to deal with difference in constructive ways. Previously unreleased archive material and present-day interviews explore the lasting influence of Lorde’s ideas.

Following the film showing we are delighted to show a video byAlexis Pauline Gumbs reading her letter to Audre Lorde that was created as part of her project The Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind. The video has been made especially for the film season.

Alexis is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist, a prayer poet priestess and has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University.  Alexis was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University, and she is currently on tour withher interactive oracle project “The Lorde Concordance,” a series of ritual mobilizing the life and work of Audre Lorde as a dynamic sacred text. Alexis’ work spreads the good news thatblack feminism lives! We are very happy to give her work some attention in the UK. You can also download a selection of her publications here.