Doc Corner: 'Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami'
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 2:00PM By Glenn Dunks
Documentaries about musicians can feel like a dime a dozen. It’s no wonder, too, since they’re such easy sells for festivals and home entertainment in a market that is over-saturated with exhibitors and distributors in need to properties that don’t require elaborate marketing campaigns -- just a hope and a prayer that they will ‘catch on’.
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is not exactly one of those films. It is unconventional as rock docs go in a whole host of ways, but it’s also a film that even its subject’s fans may struggle with. It eschews a typical birth-to-death narrative and instead focuses on Grace’s experiences in Jamaica and Paris recording her 2008 album Hurricane, recorded in garish lo-fi digital video, juxtaposed against richly filmed concert footage that echoes her 1982 One Man Show. It’s a documentary that leaves questions – like what exactly are “Bloodlight" and "Bami” (I had to look them up)? Why did it take so long to complete?
It drifts by for 115 minutes on its own sort of trippy wavelength which is, if you think about it, entirely appropriate for a documentary about Miss Grace Jones, one of the most enigmatic and exciting pop stars of the 20th century...