7:15 pm | Documentary, Music | 1h 56m
In honor of the passing of Aretha Franklin, Gospel singer Rene Bailey will perform Amazing Grace live, followed by a short Aretha Franklin music video before the screening of Grace Jones.
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is an electrifying filmic journey through the public and private worlds of pop culture mega-icon Grace Jones. The portrait contrasts musical sequences with intimate personal footage, all the while brimming with Jones’s bold aesthetic. A larger-than-life entertainer, an androgynous glam-pop diva, an unpredictable media presence – Grace Jones is all these things and more. Director Sophie Fiennes’s documentary goes beyond the traditional music bio, offering a portrait as stylish and unconventional as its subject. Taking us home with her to her native Jamaica, into the studio with long-time collaborators Sly & Robbie, and backstage at gigs around the world, the film reveals Jones as lover, daughter, mother, and businesswoman. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami offers eye-popping performances of her classic hits “Slave to the Rhythm,” “Pull Up to the Bumper,” “Love is the Drug,” and more. Jones herself has said watching the film “will be like seeing me almost naked” and, indeed, Fiennes’s treatment is every bit as definition-defying as its subject, untamed by either age or life itself.
“Brilliantly and beautifully engaged in the present. A sparkling example of how to document our icons. Allows us to appreciate the reality of the artist in her most candid moments, in her own words, which is way more interesting than what we’d find in yet another standard biopic.” – Daisy Jones, VICE
As a model, actress and singer, Grace Jones has consistently been an extreme and challenging presence in the world of entertainment since her emergence as a model in the mid-seventies. Through her early albums, she developed herself as a gay icon and disco queen. In the eighties, Grace explored the boundaries of reggae music with the likes of Sly & Robbie and played major parts in blockbuster movies like ‘Conan the Destroyer’ and the James Bond flick ‘A View to a Kill.’ Her autobiography “I’ll Never Write My Memoirs,” appeared in 2015.