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Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning

Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning

Directed by Dyanna Taylor

March 16th, 2024 3:00 pm

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Synopsis

Free Admission! Q&A with the filmmaker will follow the screening.

Beginning at 2pm, join us for a print viewing highlighting images from the collection of UC Riverside’s California Museum of Photography (CMP) related to the film.

Explore, through her granddaughter’s eyes, the life story of Dorothea Lange, the photographer who captured the iconic image ‘Migrant Mother’. Never-seen-before photos, film footage, interviews, family memories, and journals reveal the artist who challenged America to know itself.

Lange’s enduring images document five turbulent decades of American history, including the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, World War II Japanese American Internment camps, and early environmentalism. Yet few know the story, struggles, and profound body of work of the woman behind the camera.  Award winning cinematographer Dyanna Taylor, Lange’s granddaughter, directs and narrates this intimate documentary as it explores Lange’s life, probes the nature of her muses – two great men and the camera itself – and her uncompromising vision. Taylor, who learned to see the visual world at her grandmother’s feet, weaves Lange’s preparations for her career retrospective at New York’s MoMA into a universal story of a woman’s struggle to live a creative life.

This free screening is made possible with the generous support of California Humanities.

Trailer

Film Details

Director: Dyanna Taylor
Studio: 1515 Productions Limited
Running Time: 112 minutes
Country: USA
Release Year: 2014
Rated: TV-PG

Reviews

“A visual bounty of [Dorothea Lange’s] photographic legacy.” – Denver Post