Nina Simone Documentary to get September dvd, bd, cd release!

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best #Documentary at the 2016 Oscars, Best Music Film at the 2016 Grammy Awards, and winning Best Documentary at the American Film Institute Awards in 2016, documentary film What Happened, Miss Simone? connected with critics and fans alike with its deep examination of the legendary Nina Simone. On September 2, 2016, Eagle Rock Entertainment will present this film as a DVD+CD and Blu-ray+CD with additional bonus interviews not included in the main film. [MSRP $26.98 Blu-ray+CD, $21.98 DVD+CD]

What Happened, Miss Simone? is the story of Nina Simone’s life and career. Through archive interview and extensive performance footage, alongside new interviews with family, friends and colleagues, the film paints a fascinating portrait of this complex and challenging artist.

Nina Simone was many things: pianist, singer, songwriter, performer, civil rights campaigner, wife and mother, victim of abuse, and black icon. Growing up in the segregated American South, she began to learn piano at age 4, attended the Juilliard School Of Music in New York and aspired to a career as a concert pianist. Thwarted in this, allegedly because of her color, she began to play in nightclubs to earn money and her career as a jazz and blues performer was born. The film follows Nina Simone through the sixties and her intense involvement in the civil rights movement, her decision to relocate to first Africa and then Europe in the early seventies, her emotional difficulties in the eighties, and her later years in France in the nineties.

Kino Lorber Releases Pioneers of African-American Cinema on Blu-ray, DVD in July

Kino Lorber is proud to announce the release of Pioneers of African-American Cinema, a monumental five-disc set representing the significant but long-overlooked achievements of early, independent African-American filmmakers.

Among the most fascinating chapters of film history is that of the so-called "race films" that flourished in the 1920s - '40s. Unlike the "black cast" films produced within the Hollywood studio (such as Stormy Weather or Green Pastures), these films not only starred African Americans but were funded, written, produced, directed, distributed, and often exhibited by people of color. Entrepreneurial filmmakers  not only built an industry apart from the Hollywood establishment, they cultivated visual and narrative styles that were uniquely their own.

Defying convention and operating outside the studio system, these filmmakers were the forefathers (and -mothers) of the French New Wave, the L.A. Rebellion, and  the entirety of American indie cinema. Previously circulated in poor-quality 16mm prints, these newly restored versions allow us to witness the legacies of Oscar  Micheaux, Spencer Williams, and James and Eloyce Gist with fresh eyes - proving that, anything but imitative, these Pioneers of African-American Cinema were purely
innovative.