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PMA Films: Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning

  • Portland Museum of Art 7 Congress Square Portland, ME, 04101 United States (map)

SCREENING IN THE BERNARD OSHER FOUNDATION AUDITORIUM


This powerful and intimate look back at the life’s work of the legendary documentary photographer Dorothea Lange will, by turns, enlighten you and break your heart.
— Judith Trojan, Front Row Center

112 minutes. Not rated. Directed by Dyanna Taylor.

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.

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