Greenwich Entertainment, the distributor behind “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” one of 2019’s top docs, will release Billie Holiday documentary “Billie” this year. Deadline confirms Greenwich has snagged North American rights to the film, which made its world premiere at Telluride Film Festival in September. No word on a specific release date yet, but “Billie” is expected to hit theaters sometime in 2020.
“Billie” tells the story of the iconic songstress from the perspective of one of her biggest fans, Linda Lipnack Kuehl, “who in 1971 set out to write a definitive biography,” the source details. “Over eight years, she tracked down and recorded over 200 hours of interviews with the characters that knew Holiday personally. Kuehl’s book was never finished, and the tapes never before heard until now.”
The doc will feature interviews with Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sylvia Syms and Count Basie, among others, and will showcase certain Holiday performances in color for the first time. “Billie” will “paint the picture of a singer with breathtaking talent and global popularity, and whose song ‘Strange Fruit’ exposed the realities of black life in America and earned her powerful enemies over her short, turbulent life.”
“Billie” is directed by James Erskine and was made in cooperation with Holiday’s estate. New Black Films’ Victoria Gregory and REP Documentary’s Laure Vaysse are among the producers.
“Documenting the life of an icon is a daunting task, but James rose to the occasion with a mesmerizing tribute that captures the talent and torment of the most influential jazz singer of all time,” Greenwich’s Andy Bohn said. “Audiences will swoon at the performance footage and be riveted by the intimate revelations in these previously unheard interviews.”
Born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, Holiday never received any professional training or learned how to read music, yet she became one of the most renowned jazz singers ever. During her three-decade career Holiday — also known as Lady Day — recorded tracks including the seminal anti-lynching ballad “Strange Fruit,” “God Bless the Child,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” and “My Man.” She received four Grammys, all awarded after her 1959 death. She was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1976.
Grammy-nominated singer Andra Day portrays Lady Day in biopic “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” now in post-production. Penned by Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks, the film focuses on Day’s relationship with a Federal Department of Narcotics agent whose team is targeting her son.
