What Happened, Miss Simone?

The title What Happened, Miss Simone? comes from an essay written by Maya Angelou in 1970, which asks an open-ended question of the iconic African-American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist Nina Simone.  Acclaimed documentarian Liz Garbus (Bobby Fischer Against the World, The Nazi Officer's Wife, and The Farm: Angola, USA) attempts to answer the question by exploring the life and work of Simone in this vivid and revealing documentary. Far more than a simplistic celebrity biography, What Happened, Miss Simone? is a layered and probing portrait of American music and the civil rights era. 

Garbus lingers on an amazing assortment of archival footage of Simone performing and speaking—allowing the subject of the movie to convey the narrative. The few contemporary interviews Garbus conducts—with Simone’s daughter Lisa Simone Kelly, her friend and fellow musician Al Schackman, and notables like Stanley Crouch and Dick Gregory—are shot in 16mm so as to blend seamlessly with the archival material. The insights provided by those interviewed specifically for this film are vital, but this never feels like a movie where experts tell us what to think. The entire picture plays as a document we’re meant to witness, absorb, and draw our own conclusions from. What we’re left thinking and feeling is often uncomfortable—there was much in Simone’s life that is disturbing. But the sheer power of her distinctive talent grounds everything we experience.