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S35 Ep2

Flannery

Premiere: 3/23/2021 | 00:01:54 |

Explore the life of Flannery O’Connor whose provocative fiction was unlike anything published before. Featuring never-before-seen archival footage, newly discovered journals and interviews with Mary Karr, Tommy Lee Jones, Hilton Als and more.

About the Episode

The first feature-length documentary with full access to the Flannery O’Connor trust, Flannery explores the life and legacy of the literary icon with never-before-seen archival footage, original animations, O’Connor’s newly discovered personal letters and excerpts from her stories read by actress Mary Steenburgen. Featuring new, original interviews with Mary Karr, Hilton Als, Alice Walker, Tobias Wolff, Tommy Lee Jones, Alice McDermott and others, alongside archival interviews of friends and family.

A devout Catholic who collected peacocks and walked with crutches due to lupus, O’Connor’s illness, religion and experience as a Southerner informed her provocative, sharply aware stories about outsiders, prophets and sinners seeking truth and redemption. With her distinctive Southern Gothic writing style and characteristic wit and irony, the film investigates how O’Connor didn’t shy away from examining timely themes of racism, religion, socioeconomic disparity and more. Over the course of her short but prolific writing career, she published two novels, 32 short stories, numerous columns and commentaries, and won many awards, including the National Book Award and three O. Henry Awards, the annual award given to short stories of exceptional merit.

“As one of the best short story writers the nation has ever produced, O’Connor holds a mirror up to our contemporary moment, navigating the issues of racism, religious faith and disability that still haunt us today,” said co-director Mark Bosco, S.J.

“O’Connor managed to see the humor and the ridiculousness of society while documenting its injustices and imagining moments of redemption,” added co-director Elizabeth Coffman.

American Masters: Flannery is the winner of the first Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. Ken Burns called the film, “an extraordinary documentary that allows us to follow the creative process of one of our country’s greatest writers.”

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PRODUCTION CREDITS

Flannery is a production of Long Distance Educational Media in association with THIRTEEN’s American Masters.

About American Masters
Now in its 37th season on PBS, American Masters illuminates the lives and creative journeys of those who have left an indelible impression on our cultural landscape—through compelling, unvarnished stories. Setting the standard for documentary film profiles, the series has earned widespread critical acclaim: 28 Emmy Awards—including 10 for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series and five for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special—two News & Documentary Emmys, 14 Peabodys, three Grammys, two Producers Guild Awards, an Oscar, and many other honors. To further explore the lives and works of more than 250 masters past and present, the American Masters website offers full episodes, film outtakes, filmmaker interviews, the podcast American Masters: Creative Spark, educational resources, digital original series and more. The series is a production of The WNET Group.

American Masters is available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. PBS station members can view many series, documentaries and specials via PBS Passport. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.

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UNDERWRITING

Major funding for Flannery is provided by The Better Angels Society, National Endowment for the Humanities, The Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage, Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation, Patrick and Becky Cipollone, Jesuit Community of Loyola University Chicago, and William and Maureen Runzel.

Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Judith and Burton Resnick, Seton J. Melvin, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, The Ambrose Monell Foundation, Lillian Goldman Programming Endowment, Vital Projects Fund, The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, Ellen and James S. Marcus, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Koo and Patricia Yuen, Thea Petschek Iervolino Foundation, The Marc Haas Foundation and public television viewers.

TRANSCRIPT

- One critic called her perhaps the most naturally gifted of American novelists: Flannery O'Connor.

(light music) - A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

- Wise Blood.

- Mystery and Manners.

- Everything That Rises Must Converge.

- She's one of the best writers of the 20th century.

I've read everything that she's written.

- Flannery O'Connor is one of the writers least afraid to look at the darkness.

- 'We've had an accident!' the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.

'But nobody's killed,' June Star said with disappointment.'

- You think it's this bitter old alcoholic who's writing these really funny, dark stories, and then you find out she's a woman and that she's devoutly religious.

(light music) Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia into an Irish Catholic community.

- You get someone who's writing out of a specific time, civic set of manners.

What she found was mystery.

I think that a serious fiction writer describes an action only in order to reveal a mystery.

- How was she going to find the stories?

Cause she knows she needs to tell.

and how is she going to tell them?

(light music) (typewriter clicking) - I do not want to be lonely all my life, but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God.

- It's unbelievable.

- She was so sick.

- She never stopped writing.

- It was the illness that made her the writer that she is.

I feel that the grotesquity of my own work is intensified by the fact that I'm a servant and a Catholic writer.

- She's really funny.

She's often funny in a very dire way.

- She ignored the disapproval of her religion.

She ignored the disapproval of her fiction.

She just saw the mystery of the craziness.

(light music) (bird cooing)

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