The retelling of “The Color Purple,” due to hit theaters on Christmas Day, will either put fresh bruises on our collective psyche or add new shades of understanding to the Black experience, depending on your perspective.

Recognizing this, Denise TrimbleSmith, founder and owner of Courageous Conversations, brought to a live audience her Phoenix-based podcast that explores the intersections of challenging topics — sexuality in popular Black music or the LGBTQ community in the Black Christian church, for example — with an advanced screening of the new film at Look Cinemas in Chandler.

“What I would like the audience to take away from the event is sometimes being together supersedes entertainment,” TrimbleSmith said.

“It’s important for us to be in community. It’s also important for us to have representation. We may have differences of thought and different ways of coming to our own conclusions, but the fact that we were together in the same room … I think that was just so important.

“The movie has so many different things to think about, but at the end of the day, it should evoke an emotion. It’s important for us to discuss what those emotions were in order to help process them.”

“The Color Purple” started as a 1982 novel by Alice Walker. It’s since been adapted into a 1985 film and an early 2000s Broadway musical.

The new film follows the life of a Black woman whose father takes her newborn children then sells her into an abusive marriage.

The horrors she faces would be enough to break anyone, and the dramatic tension centers on how much she can take and whether she’ll survive long enough to have any moments of joy or........

© Arizona Republic