Billie

By the late 70s, journalist and Billie Holiday superfan Linda Lipnack Kuehl had amassed hundreds of hours of recorded interviews in an effort to finish a book on the mysterious and tragic jazz icon. These tapes - with Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Sylvia Sims, Sid Weiss and others - remained unreleased following Kuehl’s sudden death. Forty years later, director James Erskine weaves Kuehl’s recordings into a powerful portrait of a thoroughly modern woman, as complicated and layered as her music. Billie reveals the singer’s magnetism, her darkness, her struggles against discrimination and segregation, and with addiction, tales of the men who couldn’t control her… a hero who was victimized but never a victim. And Kuehl never shied away from the tough questions - this is a ruthlessly honest story of one woman told by another, the two united in their quests for authenticity. (Telluride Film Festival)