Sundance review: 'Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project' presents the legendary poet's life and her words beautifully

One would almost call “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” a conventional documentary — a tried-and-true mix of sit-down interviews, archival footage and filmed speeches of the movie’s subject — except that the subject, the poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, is as unconventional as one gets.

In the movie’s first soundbite Giovanni makes it clear she’s not going to make it easy on husband-and-wife directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson. “I don’t remember a lot of things, but a lot of things I don’t remember I don’t choose to remember,” Giovanni says. “I remember what’s important, and make up the rest.”

In a way, that’s freeing for the filmmakers, who don’t have to tether archival moments with things Giovanni says in the present about he past. Instead, the young Giovanni of the ‘60s and ‘70s can speak for herself through the archives, and the Giovanni of today — tempered at 79 now, but no less radical — can say what she wants to say.

The young Giovanni makes television appearances talking about revolution, “not as a reaction to whiteness,” but as “a further progression for Blackness.” The filmmakers strike gold with a 1971 conversation for British TV between Giovanni and the author James Baldwin, trading comments about whether America is still worth believing in for Black Americans. (Interestingly, their talk about Blackness remains potent and timely; the low-key sexism, demonstrated every time Baldwin calls Giovanni “sweetheart,” hasn’t aged as well.)

The Giovanni of today is shown in lecture halls, in the writing classes she teaches at Virginia Tech, and in her rather pleasant home life — she’s married to author Virginia Fowler, has a son, Thomas, from an earlier relationship, and now dotes on her teen granddaughter, Kia. Giovanni’s current fascination is with space travel, particularly the idea of going to Mars, a trip, she says, should be led by Black women, because they have smoothed over every alien situation from slavery to today.

What comes through most clearly in “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” are Giovanni’s words, in poetry and prose — heard both from Giovanni and narrator Taraji P. Henson. In those words, we hear a mind still focused on revolution, not rooted in violence but in love and curiosity.

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‘Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again Sunday, noon, The Ray Theatre, Park City. Also screening online on the Sundance Film Festival platform, through Sunday, Jan. 29, at 11:59 p.m. Mountain time. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and descriptions of violence. Running time: 102 minutes.