Busting myths about the leading British singer of the 2000s, Amy Winehouse.
For many years, the name Amy Winehouse was synonymous in pop culture with the labels given to her by the press and public figures such as TV presenters, comedians, and showbusiness colleagues. They said she was an alcoholic and drug addict, a troublemaker, but with a magnificent voice. British director Asif Kapadia, who made the eponymous documentary about Diego Maradona and the docuseries about the British music scene 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, reveals the truth.
Amy is mostly made up of archive footage and the singer’s personal video recordings. She filmed many of the events in her life, as if she wanted to tell her story herself. Kapadia focuses on these recordings, diluting them with the contradictory comments of her friends and relatives. Many of them admit that they made mistakes that would be fatal for Amy: her husband got her involved with drugs and her father decided that his addicted daughter did not need to go to rehab. Amy wrote her rebellious hit Rehab based on this story.
The film focuses particularly on Winehouse’s life as a star. After the release of Back to Black, the singer’s second and last album, her every step, be it coming home from a party or going to see her husband in prison, was tirelessly documented by the gutter press. The unprecedented pressure of the media, the unforgiving entertainment industry, and the indifference of fans to the attacks on their heroine, who was actually dying on stage, are seen by Kapadia as a single evil that for many years went unpunished. Amy reveals the external forces that led the singer to a tragic death at the age of 27, making them answer for their actions or lack of action and face up to the young Winehouse, who watches them from the long final shots of the film.
The premiere of Amy took place at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded it an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
The film will be shown in English with Russian subtitles.
Amy
Director Asif Kapadia
UK, 2015, 127 min.
18+