Nina Simone
The story focuses on Newark's Baraka family and its involvement in social activism, poetry, music, art and politics.
Tells the inspiring story of how six iconic African American female entertainers – Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone, Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier – challenged an entertainment industry deeply complicit in perpetuating racist stereotypes, and transformed themselves and their audiences in the process.
Do I Look Like a Lady? (Comedians and Singers) presents a dynamic checkerboard of moving image footage featuring African-American actors and singers from across the 20th century: from Jackie “Moms” Mabley to Eartha Kitt, Whoopi Goldberg, Whitney Houston, and several others. The video focuses on their individual voices as they express heartbreaking roles, pointed lyrics, sharp jokes, and strong statements of resistance to the dominant culture. The work is a powerful, and often riotous, reflection on the roles of black women in the United States.
The film chronicles Nina Simone's journey from child piano prodigy to iconic musician and passionate activist, told in her own words.
The documentary tracks the diva's difficult progress as she emerges from the tough, testosterone-fuelled world of the big bands of the 30s and 40s, to fill nightclubs and saloons across the US in the 50s and early 60s as a force in her own right. Looking at the lives and careers of six individual singers (Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone and Annie Ross), the film not only talks to those who knew and worked with these queens of jazz, but also to contemporary singers who sit on the shoulders of these trailblazing talents without having to endure the pain and hardship it took for them to make their highly individual voices heard above the prejudice of mid-century America.
Jazz Icons: Nina Simone features two incredible concerts from 1965 and 1968 showcasing the multifaceted diva in all her glory. Simone shines as a jazz vocalist extraordinaire on “Tomorrow Is My Turn,” as a definitive folk interpreter on Bob Dylan’s “The Ballad Of Hollis Brown” and as a passionate civil rights activist on both the epic “Four Women” and the scorching “Mississippi Goddam.” This DVD is a must for Nina Simone fans as she displays all of the qualities that made her both a supremely gifted jazz singer and pianist as well as the “High Priestess of Soul.”
Short animation on Nina Simone's song "My Baby Just Cares for Me".
This DVD features Nina Simone (vocals, piano) delivering an intense emotional performance at the legendary Ronnie Scott's in Soho, London on November 17, 1985. Simone is considered to be one of the most diverse singers of the 20th century, recording mate
Nina Simone was one of the great female vocalists of the 20th Century. She was equally at home singing jazz, blues, soul, gospel or pure pop. Hugely prolific throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies, she recorded only rarely in her later career, but remained a major live performer until well into the nineties when, becoming increasingly frail, she retired to France where she died in 2003 at the age of 70. Nina Simone made four appearances at the Montreux Festival between 1968 and 1990. This DVD features the whole performance from 1976 as the main feature and is supplemented by bonus features of two tracks from her concert in 1987 and four from her final show in 1990. This is the definitive Nina Simone Live At Montreux DVD.
Set to Nina Simone’s stirring ballad of the same name, Julie Dash’s dance film features Linda Martina Young as strong “Aunt Sarah,” tragic mulatto “Saffronia,” sensuous “Sweet Thing” and militant “Peaches.” Kinetic camerawork and editing, richly colored lighting, and meticulous costume, makeup and hair design work together with Young’s sensitive performance to examine longstanding Black female stereotypes from oblique, critical angles. (Jacqueline Stewart)
A 1970 American documentary film biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., presented in the form of newsreel footage and segments of recordings by Dr. King, framed by celebrity narrators, including Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Ruby Dee, James Earl Jones, Clarence Williams III, Burt Lancaster, Ben Gazzara, Charlton Heston, Harry Belafonte, The movie was produced by Richard Kaplan and Ely Landau.
Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.
The Harlem Cultural Festival, also known as "Black Woodstock", was a series of music concerts held in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City during the summer of 1969 to celebrate African American music and culture and to promote the continued politics of black pride. The concerts took place in Harlem's Mount Morris Park on Sundays at 3PM from June 29, 1969 to August 24, 1969. The manifestation came soon after the Watts Riots, and the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
The great Nina Simone performs live at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1987.
