Landscapes of the Heart: The Elizabeth Spencer Story (2013)

• 77%
• 2013
• Rebecca Cerese

Light in the Piazza writer Elizabeth Spencer is at the center of an intimate new documentary based on her memoir Landscapes of the Heart. This cinematic love letter reveals the moral heroism of one of America's greatest undiscovered novelist - a thoughtful Southern writer whose social questions were too big for her little hometown. The film surveys the terrain of segregated post-war Mississippi as seen through the eyes of a sheltered plantation child who turns to confrontation and rebellion against American racial injustice and ultimately ends up in exile for her troubles. Through personal interviews, dramatic re-enactments, family recollections and testimony from some of today's best writers, Landscapes of the Heart paints a vivid and compelling portrait of a strong and elegant modern woman of letters. In a story spanning two continents, dozens of books and nearly a century this movie retraces her journey from Mississippi daughter to international literary star and back again.