People across the country, from all different walks of life, are raising money to send young girls to see Hidden Figures, the film about the three black women who helped NASA send a man into space.
Taylor Richardson, a 13-year-old aspiring astronaut from Florida, wants to send 100 girls to see Hidden Figures, at a theater in Jacksonville, Florida, the Huffington Post reports. The teen first saw the movie at a screening at the White House and has since seen it three more times. She's raised over $5,000, blowing through her $2,000 goal, to make it happen for a January 21 showing of the film — and you can still donate.
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It doesn't stop there. Octavia Spencer, a Golden Globe nominee for her role in the film, announced yesterday that she had purchased all the tickets to a screening of Hidden Figures at Los Angeles' Rave Cinemas Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and that the seats were all up for grabs. "Tomorrow I've bought the 8pm showing of #hiddenfigures the rave Baldwin hills," she wrote on Instagram. "If you know a family in need that would like to see our movie but can't afford it have them come. It's first come first served. My mom would not have been able to afford to take me and my siblings. So, I'm honoring her and all single parents this #mlkweekend Pass the word."
Teachers are (not surprisingly) getting on board with sending girls to see the film too. Peter Modlin will be taking girls in second, third, fourth and fifth grade who attend the Baltimore elementary school where he teaches, after raising over $1,400 on GoFundMe (again, you can still donate!) Modlin told the Huffington Post, “I want the girls to see this movie in hopes that a lightbulb might go off. A lightbulb that signifies a belief in the opportunity to do or be anything they want to be, if they work hard to achieve that goal.”
Hidden Figures is a biographical film that tells the story of NASA pioneers Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson, whose work enabled the first launches of Americans into space and stars Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe, and Octavia Spencer.
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Directed by Theodore Melfi, the film adapts Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book about Black women who overcame racist and sexist obstacles to take on huge roles in helping America win the space race in the 1960s.
Hidden Figures is in theaters now. Watch the trailer below and maybe start your own GoFundMe campaign to send people to see it.