The Queen of Basketball

All screenings of THE QUEEN OF BASKETBALL are free. Tickets will be given away at the box office on a first-come, first-served basis beginning 15 minutes before show-time, one ticket per person.

Lusia Harris — a pioneering athlete who became a basketball phenomenon in the 1970s, made history as the first woman to score a basket in the Olympics, and was one of the first two women inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. As a child growing up in rural Mississippi, Lusia “Lucy” Harris often stayed up past her bedtime watching her favorite N.B.A. players, dreaming of one day playing on the same courts. Reaching 6 feet 3 inches by the time she was in high school, Harris was often called “long and tall and that’s all” by her classmates — but she knew her height would be an asset on the court. And she wasn’t just tall enough to play the game. She was a rare talent who would go on to be a three-time national college champion and an Olympic silver medalist, making her a national sensation by the time she finished her college career.

For an electrifying young basketball player on the national stage, success often comes with a lucrative professional contract and brand deals — but Harris’s moment came in the 1970s, decades before the W.N.B.A. was founded, when few opportunities were available to female athletes interested in pursuing a professional career. In Ben Proudfoot's "The Queen of Basketball," Harris tells the story of what happens when an unstoppable talent runs out of games to win.

Long live The Queen!