"And I always felt like there was a side to her that just was never shown, so I felt like doing something like this." "I did a job of not thinking about her for about nine years, and I think 10 is such a big number that I couldn't not think about her. "It was only really November last year I really started thinking about Amy a lot more. "I've had loads of offers before to do stuff like this in the past and it just never felt right, because I didn't feel comfortable doing it - nor was I actually in a position mentally to go there. She told Newstalk Breakfast why she chose to make this documentary now. “So I think there was definitely an imbalance there that’s maybe been rectified in some way in re-evaluating these stories, whether it’s Britney, Amy or Caroline.Her goddaughter, Dionne Bromfield, is opening up for the first time in a new documentary, 'Amy Winehouse & Me: Dionne's Story'. “I think we were like, ‘Well, why are male rock stars who go out in a blaze of glory - why is that almost celebrated but with female stars they’re often seen as this tragic figure in some way?’” says Freedman. That’s enticing for any documentary filmmaker and we like to bring that documentary quality to popular subjects.”Įqually, Freedman says “Framing Britney Spears” wasn’t a direct influence on “Reclaiming Amy” - Curious Films were already a year into the Winehouse project by the time “Framing Britney Spears” came out in February - but the two films are similar in their examination of each singer’s agency in her own life and the sexism inherent in their treatment by the media. “What I would say is we like looking at stories that people think they know, but actually don’t know the real side of things. “The fact that we have these two films in production at the same time is not a deliberate creative strategy around the business - far from it,” Freedman says.
#AMY WINEHOUSE DOCUMENTARY TRIAL#
“What the film is trying to do is kind of redefine who Amy was and she’s not defined by that relationship with Blake and that 12 months where, you know, there was a well-documented struggle with drugs.”Ĭoincidentally, at the same time as making “Reclaiming Amy,” Curious Films was also wrapping up “Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death,” a Channel 4 documentary that aired in March about the British “Love Island” presenter who died by suicide in 2020 while awaiting trial for assault. “ is not something that we dwell on for very long in the film, because I think people have heard that story,” Freedman explains. One person close to Amy who doesn’t appear in the film, however, is Blake Fielder-Civil, the singer’s ex-husband, who has been accused of introducing her to hard drugs. “We felt it was important that it wasn’t just Janis, but really those that were closest to Amy, that had never spoken before.”
With Janis and Mitchell both in their 70s, and Janis suffering from multiple sclerosis, the COVID crisis presented an acute challenge in getting the film made but, for Freedman, the bigger challenge “was gaining the trust of the people that we wanted to be in the film,” he says.
#AMY WINEHOUSE DOCUMENTARY ARCHIVE#
“For the narrative to be around that, I mean, that was incredibly difficult for Janis, so I think that’s what we’ve tried to do with that archive is just paint a picture of a girl - a very normal girl - that came from a very normal family.” “I think one of the things that found most painful about the narrative about her daughter since she died is that she came from an unhappy and unloving family and that in some way led to her problems in later life,” says Freedman.
Winehouse’s life has, of course, been raked over on screen before, most notably in Asif Kapadia’s Academy Award-winning documentary “Amy,” which comes in for some criticism from Winehouse’s parents, Janis and Mitchell, in “Reclaiming Amy” (even the title of the Curious Films documentary can be read as a rebuke.)
“There’s a huge appetite.” “Reclaiming Amy” airs Friday in the U.K., on the 10th anniversary of the singer’s death.
“It’s a golden age for documentaries and factual storytelling at the moment,” Freedman notes. Once Freedman and Russell were confident the project had legs, they pitched it to the BBC, who commissioned it for BBC Two. After reaching out to Winehouse’s mother Janis, Freedman and Curious Films co-founder Charlie Russell were invited to her home for “a cup of tea” where they quickly realized “there was a story to be told here that hadn’t been told before, a version of Amy that haven’t been allowed to share, really.”
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