Film: Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years, 1984-1992

Audre Lorde’s incisive, often-angry, but always brilliant writings and speeches defined and inspired the feminist, lesbian, Black, and women-of-color movements of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years, 1984 to 1992 documents a less-known chapter of Lorde’s life: her time in West Berlin and her influence on the German political and cultural scene during a decade of profound social change that included the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The film explores Lorde’s legacy, as she encouraged Afro-Germans—who, at that time, had no name or space for themselves—to make themselves visible within a culture that had long kept them isolated and silent. With previously unreleased archival material and more recent interviews with Lorde’s contemporaries, director Dagmar Schultz follows Lorde as she empowers of Afro-German women to recognize each other, to write, and to publish, and challenges white women to acknowledge and deal with their privilege.

Audre Lorde passed away in 1992. February 18 marks what would have been her 86th birthday.

Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years, 1984-1992
Germany, 2012, 79 min.
Dir. Dagmar Schultz

Presented as part of the event series Black Solidarity in a Global Context, in collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office.