Grace Jones Documentary

“Listen to me! I’m human, man! I’m human,” Grace Jones says in the trailer for Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami, a documentary that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

We’ll just see about that, won’t we? Shot over the course of a decade, Bloodlight and Bami was directed by Sophie Fiennes and documents the extraordinary Jones’s life onstage and off.

“You get all different sides with this documentary – totally natural, no makeup, just improv, no rehearsals and no special lighting until we did the performances, which I was totally involved with,” Jones recently told Now Toronto. “It’s really the first time that I unmask, I guess you could say.”

Jones also said she gave Fiennes complete creative control, aside from “a couple of ideas in the editing.”

“I never watched any of the footage,” said Jones. “I just had total trust in her, which is how I usually work when I collaborate.”

“Grace had fiercely controlled her public image, but made the bold decision to unmask,” Fiennes says. “She never sought to control my shooting process, and I didn’t second-guess the narrative of the film as I was shooting. I just gathered evidence. The film is a deliberately present-tense experience; for me this is the thrill-ride of verité cinema.”

Bloodlight And Bami juxtaposes Jones’ avant-garde stage persona with the true off-screen identity we seldom see. “The performer out there takes the risk—it’s a lonely place,” Jones says in the trailer. “But it’s a fascinating lonely place.”

“She is gypsy, artist and partying hedonist, warm and funny but also a fierce and tenacious businesswoman,” the film’s press notes promise of its subject. “This is a Grace we have not seen before.”   GET A  PEAK!

 

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