This was an informative and illuminating documentary on the life and career of the black American singer, writer, pianist and civil rights activist Nina Simone. I'd recently listened to a podcast about her as well as watching her inspired performance at the New York Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969 which only recently saw the light of day as part of the award-winning documentary "Summer Of Soul". She had a reputation for being a sometimes moody performer and certainly as a testing interviewee for journalists but this video portrait of her showed instead a very human and humane person, as passionate in her life as in her live performances.
From humble beginnings, she soon discovered she had a talent for playing piano and was so good on the instrument that she was sent to the famed Juilliard Music Conservatoire in New York with the ambition to be the first black female concert pianist on the classical music circuit but failed to get her degree almost certainly due to the racism of the times.
So she turned to playing popular music in bars and encouraged to sing, soon became noticed. The combination of her distinctive appearance and presence, dexterity on the keyboard and unique singing voice saw her develop a formidable live reputation and soon she was making records, scoring popular success with tunes like "I Loves You Porgy" and "My Baby Just Cares For Me".
By this time she had also been married twice, her second husband a policeman who quit his day-job to manage her. Despite his periodic abuse of her, both having other partners and divorcing after ten years, both speak warmly of the other, as together they have a daughter, who is shown giving vivid testimony of growing up with her never-boring parents.
Simone's life and career will probably always be defined by her devotion to engage actively with the American Civil Rights movement of the time as we see her joining Martin Luther King on his marches, hooking up with the likes of Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and most importantly write and sing openly controversial songs supporting the struggle, especially the song "Mississippi Goddam!" No passive resistance from this lady, who once told King that she wasn't a supporter of his advocated non-violent struggle for racial equality.
My main criticism of this film would be its focus on her time in the 60's with the period from the 70's through to her death in 2003 barely touched upon. Strange too, not to hear anywhere on the soundtrack her brilliant version of "Feeling Good". Nevertheless, with a wealth of compelling interview and live performance archive of the artist herself, candid interviews with her manager-ex-husband, daughter and the usual coterie of critics, commentators and contemporaries, striking photographic imagery and perhaps most of all, access to her own handwritten diaries, a clear picture emerges of a prodigiously talented, driven artist who against the odds, carved out a significant personal, political and musical legacy
Difficult to love but impossible to ignore, I hope this well-crafted if somewhat selective film biography brings her personal and musical achievements to a wider audience even today, almost twenty years after she passed.
From humble beginnings, she soon discovered she had a talent for playing piano and was so good on the instrument that she was sent to the famed Juilliard Music Conservatoire in New York with the ambition to be the first black female concert pianist on the classical music circuit but failed to get her degree almost certainly due to the racism of the times.
So she turned to playing popular music in bars and encouraged to sing, soon became noticed. The combination of her distinctive appearance and presence, dexterity on the keyboard and unique singing voice saw her develop a formidable live reputation and soon she was making records, scoring popular success with tunes like "I Loves You Porgy" and "My Baby Just Cares For Me".
By this time she had also been married twice, her second husband a policeman who quit his day-job to manage her. Despite his periodic abuse of her, both having other partners and divorcing after ten years, both speak warmly of the other, as together they have a daughter, who is shown giving vivid testimony of growing up with her never-boring parents.
Simone's life and career will probably always be defined by her devotion to engage actively with the American Civil Rights movement of the time as we see her joining Martin Luther King on his marches, hooking up with the likes of Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and most importantly write and sing openly controversial songs supporting the struggle, especially the song "Mississippi Goddam!" No passive resistance from this lady, who once told King that she wasn't a supporter of his advocated non-violent struggle for racial equality.
My main criticism of this film would be its focus on her time in the 60's with the period from the 70's through to her death in 2003 barely touched upon. Strange too, not to hear anywhere on the soundtrack her brilliant version of "Feeling Good". Nevertheless, with a wealth of compelling interview and live performance archive of the artist herself, candid interviews with her manager-ex-husband, daughter and the usual coterie of critics, commentators and contemporaries, striking photographic imagery and perhaps most of all, access to her own handwritten diaries, a clear picture emerges of a prodigiously talented, driven artist who against the odds, carved out a significant personal, political and musical legacy
Difficult to love but impossible to ignore, I hope this well-crafted if somewhat selective film biography brings her personal and musical achievements to a wider audience even today, almost twenty years after she passed.