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2 articles from 2009

26 December 2009 4:05 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Mark Kermode enjoys a Billy Paul biopic, a faux-biopic of mountain-dancing madman Jesco White, two David Lynch collections and a celebration of Derek Jarman

Over the past few years, several music documentaries that would previously have been confined to TV have taken a brief theatrical bow before appearing on DVD. This year's standout was Am I Black Enough for You (pictured, 2009, Drakes Avenue, E) the story of Philadelphia soul legend Billy Paul. Having achieved mainstream success with "Me and Mrs Jones", Paul horrified his "cross-over" fans with the radical broadside that gives this DVD its name, which promptly relegated him to outsider status. Years later, artists such as Schoolly D (who features here) helped to reclaim him as a lost icon of black power, although the bittersweet battle between principle and opportunity is left unresolved in this engrossing portrait.

Occupying a space between music biopic and psychotic fantasia, White Lightnin' (2009, Momentum, »

- Mark Kermode

4 December 2009 1:56 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

More familiar with life on the fringes of British cinema, director Sally Potter finds herself the subject of a BFI retrospective. But she has no interest in looking back

In the late 1980s, Sally Potter was scratching around for funding to make Orlando, the Virginia Woolf adaptation widely considered her finest film, as well as a formative moment in the career of its star, Tilda Swinton. Potter's friend, the visionary director Michael Powell, had secured her a 10-minute meeting with Martin Scorsese, in which she hoped to convince him to extend a helping hand to a fellow maverick.

"Tilda and I went with our producer to meet Scorsese in New York," says the 60-year-old Potter, seated at a table in her east London office. "We walked into his place and nearly fainted with admiration. He then proceeded to spend the entire 10 minutes talking about how incredibly difficult life was for »

- Ryan Gilbey

2 articles from 2009