Amy Winehouse Doco announced in NZIFF music line-up

The New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) has announced four spectacular musical titles for the 2015 programme, celebrating the the best in sight and sound from around the world.

The lives and musical careers of Amy Winehouse, Mavis Staples and The Who take centre stage in three powerful bio-pics, and the poetic From Scotland with Love teams archival footage with the stirring folk songs of King Creosote to resounding cinematic effect.

From the director of Senna Asif Kapadia comes Amy, an intimate, overwhelmingly moving tribute to great young British soul singer Amy Winehouse. Her talent and charisma brought her more fame than anyone might be able to handle, and this compelling portrait tells Amy’s story sensitively in all its highs and lows, with contributions from the key people in her life.

“I’ll stop singing when I have nothing left to say”, said the great Mavis Staples. “And that’s not gonna happen.” The life, music and passionate commitment of the irresistible Mavis Staples are lovingly chronicled in Mavis! A joyful tribute to a living legend, Ms. Staples is both star and consummate storyteller, revealing untold tales of her long life as a woman in music, both on stage and off. Director Jessica Edwards entwines material from the archives with new interviews.

A rock’n’roll ride from beginning to end, Lambert & Stamp tells the candid, definitive and hugely entertaining tale of the rise of The Who. Including an astonishing plethora of black and white footage kept by the band’s film-making managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, director James D. Cooper brings together the frivolity and swinging chaos of London in the 1960s, and the world of rock music on the brink of explosion.

A vibrant, kaleidoscopic elegy for 20th century Scotland, From Scotland with Love is a collaboration between ex-pat New Zealand director Virginia Heath and prolific Scottish indie folksinger King Creosote (Kenny Anderson). Rather than use interviews or voiceover, the film pairs archival footage with poetic, original songs that tell stories and embellish a myriad of clips: industry, education, protest, housing, war, rural life, and, most stirringly, parties, parades, celebrations, holidays in the Highlands or at the beach.

The NZIFF runs from the 6 July – 2 August 2015.

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