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Nina Simone Netflix Documentary Gets Standing Ovation at Sundance

Netflix’s new documentary about the life of singer Nina Simone is off to a strong start, receiving high praise from the audience at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, What Happened, Miss Simo...
Nina Simone Netflix Documentary Gets Standing Ovation at Sundance
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Netflix’s new documentary about the life of singer Nina Simone is off to a strong start, receiving high praise from the audience at the Sundance Film Festival.

    The film, What Happened, Miss Simone?, received a standing ovation and the praise has continued on Twitter.

    The documentary, announced in December, will hit Netflix this year.

    Classically trained pianist, dive-bar chanteuse, black power icon and legendary recording artist, Nina Simone lived a life of brutal honesty, musical genius, and tortured melancholy. In this epic documentary, director Liz Garbus interweaves never-before-heard recordings and rare archival footage together with Nina’s most memorable songs, to create an unforgettable portrait of one of the least understood, yet most beloved, artists of our time.

    The film uses never-before-heard audio tapes, recorded over the course of three decades, of Nina telling her life story to various interviewers and would-be biographers. From over 100 hours of these recordings, What Happened, Miss Simone? weaves together Nina’s narrative, told largely in her own words. Rare concert footage and archival interviews, along with diaries, letters, interviews with Nina’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, friends and collaborators, along with other exclusive materials, make this the most authentic, personal, and unflinching telling of the extraordinary life of one of the 20th Century’s greatest recording artists.

    After the premiere of the film, John Legend took to the stage to play a touching tribute to Simone, who died in 2003.

    “Her life was a reflection of the legacy of racism in America but also of the extraordinary power that a righteous voice can have against even the most wicked historical legacy,” said Garbus.

    Image via Netflix, YouTube

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