Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun (review)

Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun is a moving interpretation of Zora Neale Hurston's life and career. In fact, a viewer can easily sit halfway through the eighty-four-minute film and forget one is watching a documentary. By juxtaposing black-and-white footage of Hurston in the 1920s and 1930s with colorful reenactments, Kristy Anderson and Sam Pollard manage to simultaneously emphasize the historicity of Hurston's work and the timelessness of it as well. Early in the documentary, Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway remarks that "she [Hurston] was bodacious, outrageous. She enjoyed shaking things up." Seemingly, the documentary's intent is to pay homage to this aspect of Hurston's personality, but it does much more in that it offers a holistic view of Zora Neale Hurston's life and work.

Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun begins with black-and-white footage of Hurston conducting fieldwork in a small church in Beaufort, South Carolina. Later, the film reveals that funding by Margaret Mead helped Hurston create a film about Commandment Seeker Baptist Church. While these images revolve, a voice, presumably that of Hurston herself, proclaims, "I am not tragically colored." As the first words spoken in the film, not only does Hurston's famous proclamation provide insight into her outlook on life, but it also articulates the theme of the documentary. Through the remarks of various commentators, the film emphasizes Hurston's lifelong refusal to accept charity, victimhood, and, ultimately, the inferiority of African Americans. For Hurston, belief in the beauty, intelligence, and integrity of African Americans translated into a conservative political agenda, which often put her at odds with her contemporaries. After the initial opening sequence of her fieldwork, Jump at the Sun flashes back to Hurston's childhood and some of the definitive events in Hurston's early life. Among these were growing up the daughter of a Baptist minister and the mayor of the all black town of Eatonville, Florida, and the death of her mother when Zora was thirteen. Hurston's father was significant because he provided inspiration for the black Baptist preacher in her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine. Hurston's mother was instrumental in shaping young Zora because she discouraged mediocrity by exhorting Zora to "jump at de sun." This proclamation, from which the documentary takes its title, is significant in that it provides a source of inspiration for Hurston even after her mother's death. Shortly after the death of her mother, Zora's family disintegrates, and after being sent to live with relatives in Jacksonville, she leaves school and embarks on a seemingly aimless journey for fifteen years. At the end of these wanderings Hurston enrolls at Howard University, where she meets Alain Locke, who suggests that she relocate to Harlem; it is at this point that the film picks up with an evaluation of Hurston's life from the perspective of numerous would-be Hurston scholars including Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway, anthropologist Lee Baker, and literary critic Henry Louis Gates.

In addition to the occasionally contradictory interpretations of Hurston offered by these scholars, one of the most compelling aspects of this documentary is the color reenactment of Hurston's radio interview on the Mary Margaret McBride Show. The interview occurred in January 1943 after the publication of her autobiography, but the re-creation has a timelessness that almost gives viewers the feeling that they are watching Zora herself. As appealing as the interview is, a five- or ten-minute portion in the middle of the documentary probably would have given Jump at the Sun a stagnant feeling, but because commentary by various critics is interspersed throughout, it keeps both the interview and the commentary fresh. Though it addresses Hurston's professional disagreements tangentially, the film identifies the major personal and professional conflicts that Hurston experienced during her life, including contention between her and contemporaries such as Langston...