Friday Nite Videos | April 9, 2021
Portside
One of Nina Simone's searing civil rights songs. The lyrics by poet Langston Hughes weave a kaleidoscope of issues and images.
A biography of the iconic Nina Simone. Using rare archival footage, audio recordings and interviews (including talks with her daughter and extracts from Simone's private diaries), this examination of her life highlights her musical inventiveness and unwavering quest for racial justice, while laying bare the personal demons that plagued her from the time of her Jim Crow childhood in North Carolina to her self-imposed exiles in Liberia and Paris.
Using never-before-heard recordings, rare archival footage and her best-known songs, this is the story of legendary singer and activist Nina Simone.
From 100 hours of recently unearthed audiotapes recorded over decades, the Liz Garbus film weaves together Nina’s narrative, told largely in her own words. Rare concert footage, archival interviews, along with diaries, letters, interviews with Nina’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, friends and collaborators, make this the most authentic, personal and unflinching telling of the extraordinary life of one of the 20th century’s greatest recording artists.
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