Billie Holiday doc on BBC2 repeat.

[Serial_Apologist]

In case this was missed back in March, it comes up for re-broadcast this coming Friday - link to the original on iplayer below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t8qv/billie-in-search-of-billie-holiday

This unflinching portrait of the wildly gifted but ill-fated jazz singer draws on a trove of research amassed in the 1970s by the journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl. The film assembles classic performance footage alongside extracts from interviews that range from jazz legends Count Basie and Charles Mingus to school friends, lovers, lawyers - and the FBI agents who arrested her. The complexities of Holiday's life emerge, including her various addictions and the political consequences to her recording of the protest song Strange Fruit.

[Jazzrook]

In case this was missed back in March, it comes up for re-broadcast this coming Friday - link to the original on iplayer below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t8qv/billie-in-search-of-billie-holiday

This unflinching portrait of the wildly gifted but ill-fated jazz singer draws on a trove of research amassed in the 1970s by the journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl. The film assembles classic performance footage alongside extracts from interviews that range from jazz legends Count Basie and Charles Mingus to school friends, lovers, lawyers - and the FBI agents who arrested her. The complexities of Holiday's life emerge, including her various addictions and the political consequences to her recording of the protest song Strange Fruit.

Also, Alex Winter's 2-hour documentary 'Zappa' will be broadcast on BBC4(Fri 22 October, 9pm)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010rl8

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

Also, Alex Winter's 2-hour documentary 'Zappa' will be broadcast on BBC4(Fri 22 October, 9pm)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010rl8

JR

Great - many thanks!

[kernelbogey]

Thanks, S_A - Ill try to catch this.

[cloughie]

Thanks, S_A - Ill try to catch this.

Et moi aussi, S_A!

[Padraig]

Et moi aussi, S_A!

Mise freisin.

[kernelbogey]

I watched this last night on iPlayer. I'm not knowledgeable about jazz, and knew little about Billie, although I've always been intrigued hearing her voice. This film skilfully constructed a filmic biography of her combining the audio tapes of her interviewer, Linda Lipnack Kuehl, with mostly still images of her and her contemporaries. For me, it didn't get much below the observed externals of her life to who she really was, although the chilling revelation of her apparently masochistic relationship with men came across clearly. As did the horror of segregation in the US South in our lifetimes. There was an understandable ambiguity about whether the film was about Billie or her journalist biographer Kuehl, who died in myserious circumstances - suicide or murder? - and in the last 15 or so minutes the film appeared to be on the verge of ending several times.