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Filmmakers Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn-Whack share some of the inspiration and process that went into making the film Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise.


Funding for Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise is provided by IDP Foundation, Ford Foundation/Just Films, National Endowment for the Arts, National Black Programming Consortium, Anne Ulnick, Michael Metelits, and Loida and Leslie Lewis.

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Major support for American Masters is provided by AARP. Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Rosalind P. Walter, The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Ellen and James S. Marcus, Vital Projects Fund, Lillian Goldman Programming Endowment, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation and public television viewers.

Features

Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- PBS Previews: Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise PREVIEW: 2:00
PBS Previews: Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise
A behind-the-scenes look at American Masters - Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Listen to Dr. Maya Angelou's take on creative writing CLIP: 0:49
Listen to Dr. Maya Angelou's take on creative writing
Dr. Maya Angelou describes the challenges she faced as a writer.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Louis Gossett Jr. shares a story about his great-grandmother CLIP: 0:32
Louis Gossett Jr. shares a story about his great-grandmother
Louis Gossett Jr. shares a story about his great-grandmother.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Dr. Angelou's inauguration poem for President Bill Clinton CLIP: 2:10
Dr. Angelou's inauguration poem for President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton decided to have a poet read at his inauguration: Dr. Maya Angelou.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Explore the friendship between Maya Angelou and Malcolm X CLIP: 2:04
Explore the friendship between Maya Angelou and Malcolm X
While Maya Angelou was living in Ghana, she met and began working with Malcolm X.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Maya Angelou's missed opportunity to work with Pearl Bailey CLIP: 1:26
Maya Angelou's missed opportunity to work with Pearl Bailey
Maya Angelou nearly had an opportunity early in her career to work with Pearl Bailey.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Hear how Maya Angelou met Tupac Shakur for the first time CLIP: 1:52
Hear how Maya Angelou met Tupac Shakur for the first time
Without realizing it, Maya Angelou met Tupac Shakur.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Go behind the scenes with John Singleton CLIP: 1:30
Go behind the scenes with John Singleton
John Singleton shares why he believes Dr. Angelou's story is so important.
Explore Dr. Maya Angelou’s Life through her books
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Learn why Maya Angelou signed with Porgy and Bess CLIP: 0:57
Learn why Maya Angelou signed with Porgy and Bess
Dr. Maya Angelou started her career singing and dancing in San Francisco.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- See Maya Angelou's early performances in the Bay Area CLIP: 0:59
See Maya Angelou's early performances in the Bay Area
Maya Angelou transitioned from dancing to singing early in her career.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Behind the Scenes: Common, Rita Coburn-Whack & Maya Angelou CLIP: 1:37
Behind the Scenes: Common, Rita Coburn-Whack & Maya Angelou
Rita Coburn-Whack originally introduced Maya Angelou and Common.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Maya Angelou On Teaching CLIP: 2:13
Maya Angelou On Teaching
Maya Angelou speaks about her work as a teacher and what she shares with her students.
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Maya Angelou & James Baldwin CLIP: 1:30
Maya Angelou & James Baldwin
“Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise” Film Excerpt: Maya Angelou & James Baldwin
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise -- Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise - Trailer PREVIEW: 2:38
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise - Trailer
Maya Angelou gave people the freedom to think about their history in a way they never had.
Norman Lear and Maya Angelou collage
Sundance Festival Announces Documentary Line-up, Including American Masters films
Among the 2016 festival premieres are two films coming to American Masters next year: Maya...
Maya Angelou: “Still I Rise”
On the occasion of Maya Angelou's memorial, the makers of American Masters: Maya Angelou (w.t.)...
Maya Angelou
In Memoriam: Maya Angelou
At the time of Maya Angelou’s death, she was participating in the first feature documentary...
TRANSCRIPT

As a young person reading, 'I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings' became one of those books that Black children didn't have.

Prior to that we didn't hear a little girl's story. So her story at that point in time - the late '60s - really hit the scene and just flourished and made reading and inclusion and diversity and characters something that I don't think we'd seen before. I had always been a fan of Maya Angelou. For years I remember reading 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' and being deeply moved by that story that she told of growing up in the Jim Crow South and Arkansas - the love she had for her grandmother - the difficulties she had when she was raped when she was seven - the honesty of that book. Somewhere along the way I was kind of thinking about her, musing about Maya Angelou and I I started to realize I had never heard of a film being made about her. So I did some research, and sure enough nobody had ever made that film - it was amazing to me. The reason why Maya Angelou's story is so important is because history by and large has not been written by Black women. They've also been left out of the history books. Her birth in the Jim Crow South in 1928, to the Great Migration in St. Louis in the '30s, and with Porgy and Bess - her traveling with the State Department - to the Women's Movement, to the Arts Movement, and working with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X - what you get is you get a historical perspective of this country that we haven't had before.

It makes her story very unique. Guy Johnson, who is Maya Angelou's son, is in my opinion one of the one of the most compelling people in the film. He's a tremendous storyteller who also has an amazing rye sense of humor. Through his story, really, he's able to walk us through her story because he grew up living with her she raised him as a single parent. And he talks about the struggles they went through; he also talks about the the joy of things that they went through.

He describes in detail how Maya Angelou met James Baldwin and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and other people like that, so his story is central to the film.

Working on film, television, broadcast for the past 30 years, I've never seen anyone go back into time and drop you into that space where they're telling the story.

She gave 100 percent of herself.

She remembered. I think it was cathartic for her.

You could feel the story. You could feel the emotion, and you could feel the truth in her words. People often remark to us after seeing the film how uncanny the film is in terms of how it's relevant to what's happening today, with the Black Lives Matter movement with the gulf that we have in our society, and Maya Angelou was a person who stood for bringing people together, bridging divides, getting past our prejudices and our bigotry, and she was always interested in forgiveness and reconciliation. And these are kind of themes I think that are very important. I think that's why people really relate to the film as a contemporary film, but also as a historical document. We start the film with these words: 'We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That in fact it may be necessary to encounter defeat, so we can know who the hell we are.'

That's how life is: we have one defeat after another, in a sense, but still we rise, still we go beyond those defeats, and we must not be defeated.

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