US Debut of Miss Sharon Jones Kicks off DOCNYC 2015 with Soul IFC Center Director John Vanco calls Barbara Kopple's biopic of legendary soul singer "perhaps the greatest opening night film yet" in DOC NYC's six-year history.
Written by Laura Dattaro
When the curtains rose for the US premiere of Miss Sharon Jones! to kick off the 2015 DOCNYC Festival on Thursday night, the people in the audience knew what they were going to get. IFC Center Director John Vanco called it “perhaps the greatest opening-night film yet” in DOCNYC’s six-year history. Director Barbara Kopple, who had won a Lifetime Achievement Award earlier that day at DOCNYC’s Visionaries Tribute, said making the film “had been one of the great experiences of my life, and I will never forget it.”
Viewers are unlikely to forget the film either. The film follows soul singer Sharon Jones through a debilitating bout of pancreatic cancer and the six months of chemotherapy that follows, a treatment that left her with little energy to engage in rehearsals and live performances leading up to the release of her band’s next album, Give the People What They Want.
Jones, who’s often compared to James Brown, got a late start in her singing career, releasing her first album at age 40 after working as a wedding singer and a correctional officer at Rikers Island. In 2002, she released her first album with her current band, The Dap Kings, touring and recording with them until 2013, when she was diagnosed with cancer.
Kopple picks up the story of her life here, when The Dap Kings are taking their first-ever break from performing to allow Jones to recuperate from her surgery and treatment. Miss Sharon Jones! is an intimate portrait, following Jones into doctor’s appointments and hours of chemotherapy, showing her lying in bed for hours watching TV, capturing her still-groggy reaction to the news that she’s cancer-free as she awakes from sedatives following an endoscopy.
While these quiet scenes contrast greatly with the pure energy emanating from Jones in on-stage footage, the film manages to stay upbeat, largely because of Jones herself, who despite her struggle and the return of her cancer, never misses an opportunity for a joke. She visits a farm with the friend who is caring for her, and puts on a show for the goats. When she sits in a barber’s chair with her chopped-off braids in her hands, shaving her head in preparation for chemo, she looks at her newly bald reflection in the mirror and declares, “I got a pretty-shaped head!”, making everyone in the room laugh.
What was meant to be a post-film discussion turned into something of a family reunion, with Kopple, Jones, the Dap Kings, the backup singers the Dappettes, and the documentary’s producers and editors squeezing onto the stage, 22 people in all. “I always called this the year from hell, but somehow Barbara and her team made it beautiful,” Jones’ manager Alex Kadvan told the audience. Always the gracious performer, Jones indulged a request to hear her sing with a Gospel song featured in the movie: “I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free.”
Laura Dattaro is a freelance journalist in New York and has written for the Columbia Journalism Review, symmetry magazine, and others. Follow her on Twitter at @ldattaro.
