VIDEO: First Look - PBS Presents Documentary on A RAISIN IN THE SUN Playwright Lorraine Hansberry

One week after the anniversary of her death, AMERICAN MASTERS -- Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart premieres nationwide Friday, January 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) and will stream the following day at pbs.org/americanmasters and PBS apps. Check out the trailer below!

Award-winning filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain examines the activism and art of Lorraine Hansberry (5/19/30-1/12/65) beyond her most well-known play, "A Raisin in the Sun" (1959). The film features interviews with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, HARRY Belafonte, and Louis Gossett Jr., narration by award-winning actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson, and THE VOICE of Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose as Hansberry. The result is a timely and revealing portrait of an activist and artist whose popular recognition has, until now, remained long overdue.

On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway and changed the face of American theater forever. Depicting the limitations of the American dream through the lives of a black family on Chicago's South Side, the play's richly drawn characters and unprecedented subject matter attracted record crowds and earned it the coveted top prize from the New York Drama Critics' Circle. But while the play is universally seen as a groundbreaking work of art, the fascinating story of Hansberry's life is far less well known.