Invisible Beauty Theatrical Premiere at Film Forum (2023)

New York’s Film Forum will present the U.S. theatrical premiere of Bethann Hardison and Frédéric Tcheng’s Invisible Beauty, on Friday, September 15, 2023.

Naomi Campbell, Kimora Lee Simmons, Tyra Banks, Tyson Beckford were dazzling, barrier-breaking supermodels of color in the 1990s. However, two decades earlier, Bethann Hardison burst onto French and American runways with a defiant strut and unique personality. Hardison was the first Black woman to own a racially diverse modeling agency and called out fashion houses around the globe, including Prada and Calvin Klein, for the lack of models of color in their shows and the exclusionary casting calls that were in the industry, all while profiting from Black consumers.

Co-directed by Hardison and Frédéric Tcheng (Dior And I, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel), Invisible Beauty is part memoir, with candid accounts from her son, actor Kadeem Hardison from A Different World, and part ballad to an unsung hero. Featuring intimate interviews with collaborators including Naomi Campbell, Tyson Beckford, Iman, Tracee Ellis Ross, Fran Lebowitz, Pat Cleveland, Stephen Burrows, Whoopi Goldberg, Ralph Lauren, and more, Invisible Beauty chronicles the life of a maverick at the epicenter of major representational shifts in fashion.

Invisible Beauty had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was selected for the 2023 Tribeca Festival.