Photo by Rosie Kar, PhD
Angela Bowen (left), Jennifer Abod, and poet Kitty Tsui
In The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen, which will be playing this Thursday night as one of the opening movies in the 2015 New Haven International Film Festival, director Jennifer Abod documents the many challenges and triumphs of a woman who continually sought to reinvent herself as she came to know and embrace each aspect of a complicated identity. Indeed, the film is a sort of love letter — a well-deserved and carefully made one — to the New Haven dancer, feminist, civil rights activist and scholar offers a loving portrait of a life defined by difficult transitions, hard-won success and lasting personal and professional influence.
Abod, a feminist media producer who has also been Bowen’s partner for the past 35 years, called into the latest episode of WNHH radio’s “Deep Focus” to talk about the life and legacy of someone who never yielded to the persistent forces of racism, sexism, and LGBTQ discrimination.
As a professional dancer who cherished both Tchaikovsky and traditional African music, Bowen embodied that rich, fractured state that W.E.B. DuBois described as “double consciousness”: the uneasy co-existence of African and American identities, particularly when the latter is defined so stringently by people who categorically reject the former.
“What the film does, I believe, is help people to understand how someone survives and tries to take hold of her life in spite of the prejudice of the times,” Abod said, reflecting on Bowen’s towering feats of resilience. Indeed, Passionate Pursuits documents that resilience in practice at nearly every stage of her life, from her humble upbringing in Jim Crow-era Boston to the painfully conspicuous racism of mid-century Broadway to a New Haven that welcomed Bowen as a dancer and community leader, but struggled with her subsequent coming out as a lesbian.
After each bout of conflict, resistance, achievement, and success, Bowen comes into focus as someone with little tolerance for modulating her intellect and talents to suit prevailing social norms.
“She’s influenced so many people, and inspired so many people,” Abod said. “[In the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s], there wasn’t a Misty Copeland. There were no black ballerinas out there. The story of being a black lesbian feminist and being on television, on radio, writing and being open and honest and authentic: there just wasn’t an image like that out there, anywhere. It felt to me that I was in a position to extend her legacy.”
Abod’s Passionate Pursuits is just that: an attempt to celebrate a life story that is brimming with the potential to inspire; that is crying out not to be overlooked or forgotten. Bowen’s life was difficult, the movie implies, so that those of a next generation of female dancers, activists, and scholars can be a little less so. When one woman paves the way for success and change, then others can tread those paths with a little less resistance. “This is basically the evolution of a person’s authenticity,” Abod put forth. “And I think that all of us want to be authentic people. So the question is: how does she do it?” The answers, engaging and tragic and ultimately inspiring, are written all over this film, and burst forth from Bowen’s life itself.
To listen to the full interview, click on or download the above sound file.
The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen will be playing on Thursday at 8 p.m. at Gateway Community College as the opening night film of the 2015 New Haven International Film Festival. Click http://ctfilmfest.com/newhaven/Schedule”>here for more details.