GME Licenses Hugh Bell’s Photographs of Billie Holiday for James Erskine Documentary

Click image for the trailer for BILLIE

Available in the U.S. as of December 4th, BILLIE (2020) is a documentary about the singer who changed the face of American music, and the journalist who died trying to tell her story. Directed by award-winning filmmaker James Erskine, the documentary is based on 200 hours of interviews conducted from 1970 to 1978 by journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl. Kuehl had intended to write a definitive biography of Holiday, and her research comprised interviews—taking up 125 audio cassette tapes—with Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Charles Mingus, and Sylvia Syms, among many other colleagues in the jazz world. She also spoke to Holiday’s cousin and childhood friends, as well as to her attorneys and the FBI agents who kept her under surveillance, due to both her drug use and her outspoken antiracism.

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Kuehl passed away in 1979, leaving her biography unwritten and her interviews largely unheard. Erskine has made these interviews the core of his film, along with archival film and photographs, all of it newly restored. Featured prominently among the archival photographs are several taken by Hugh Bell of Billie Holiday backstage at Carnegie Hall in 1956. This suite of photographs capture the iconic singer in a more candid light, revealing new dimensions to her vulnerability.

Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is the exclusive representative of the Estate of Hugh Bell. For more information about Hugh Bell and his legacy, please contact David Deitch, Fine Arts Curator, at david@gartenbergmedia.com.

All photographs are © The Estate of Hugh Bell.