New film season at the BFI celebrates black women and their musical artistry
The BFI Southbank is celebrating black women and their musical artistry in their new film season, and features films with performances from Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston and Beyoncé.
Her Voice: Black Women from the Spotlight to the Screen will run from May 17 to June 30 and will showcase black female performers who have been a major inspiration for musicians and audiences globally, as well as women known for their vocal performances who have appeared on screen.
The programme includes biopics, documentaries and concert films, starting with Amazing Grace which covers the recording of Aretha Franklin’s Grammy-winning album.
What’s Love Got To Do With It, which earned Angela Bassett an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Tina Turner, will also be shown.
The movie is a warts-and-all biopic depicting her trials and tribulations as a black woman pursuing success in the music industry.
Dreamgirls, based on the hit Broadway musical, is also featured in the programme.
This tale of black female ambition and heartbreak, which also stars Beyoncé and Anika Noni Rose, was loosely based on the rise of Motown and The Supremes.
Further screenings will shine a light on important black women whose talent changed music and perceptions about black stardom, demanding respect for themselves and others.
This includes the fascinating, sad and revealing documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me?, which uses previously unseen material and archive footage to weave a portrait of the iconic artist who, on the surface, seemed to have it all.
The remarkable life of gospel music legend and civil rights icon Mavis Staples and her family group The Staple Singers is captured on film for the first time in Mavis!
This documentary features powerful live performances, rare archive footage and conversations with friends and contemporaries including Bob Dylan and Prince.
The life and talent of American Jazz legend Billie Holiday is explored in Billie.
Featuring never-before-heard taped interviews with those who knew her best, Billie celebrates a powerful performer and advocate.
The festival will also feature musicals and dramas. The first black woman to star in a feature film, Josephine Baker plays Papitou in Siren of the Tropics, a silent French film which will screen with live piano accompaniment.
Siren of the Tropics is the story of a wide-eyed woman who falls in love with a prospector and leaves her home in the Antilles for Paris, where she’s transformed into a stunning music-hall beauty.
Lena Horne leads the cast of 1940s musical Stormy Weather. Set in Harlem, this familiar story of love lost and found captures the vitality of a black community.
It also showcases the range and diversity of some of the best A-list black entertainers of the time, including Horne, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway, Katherine Dunham, Fats Waller and the Nicholas Brothers.
Her Voice: Black Women From the Spotlight to the Screen is at BFI Southbank from May 17 to June 30.
Tickets on sale from May 3; bfi.org.uk/whatson
Main pic: Still from Siren of the Tropics with Josephine Baker
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