Listening for Something... Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand in Conversation
1996 · 55m · Canada
Directed by Dionne Brand
Genres: documentary, essay film, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, provocative, tender
Poets Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand meet in homes and outdoor settings across the United States, Tobago and Canada to discuss feminism, racism, sexuality and politics.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two major poets just... talking? Sounds like the opposite of subversive until you realize Brand is essentially dismantling the white literary canon in real time, refusing to perform intellectualism for the camera—it's a quiet middle finger to every talking-heads doc that came before it.
Brand positions this within the essay film lineage while honoring the oral tradition of Black feminist thought; the conversational form becomes the argument itself, each domestic and landscape setting a deliberate visual citation of how intellectual work happens outside the academy.
The decision to let these conversations breathe across geographies—moving between homes and outdoors—transforms what could be a static interview into something kinetic, and Brand's restraint as director (staying behind the camera entirely) lets the specificity of each poet's voice and the chemistry between them do all the heavy lifting.