News February 20, 2018

Grace Jones’ Bloodlight and Bami hits Australian screens on International Women’s Day

A critic recently observed, ”Now that Prince and David Bowie have departed this mortal plane, is there anyone left who still embodies that electrifying notion of star as otherworldly androgynous superfreak?

“Perhaps only Grace Jones, art-rock glamazon supreme, has the requisite reserves of impenetrable mystique and old-school majesty.”

It was this quality that director Sophie Fiennes was aiming for in Bloodlight and Bami.

She wanted to strip away the mask following Jones on a holiday road trip across her native Jamaica but at the same time glorifying her magnetic and enigmatic stage presence.

The footage was collected over five years, recording, lazing in luxury suites in far flung exotic ports, guzzling champagne breakfasts, appearing at awards ceremonies and movie premieres in outrageous costumes, and following up high profile blow ups with a sigh: “Sometimes you have to be a high-flying bitch.”

“I was going for theatre,” Fiennes reveals. “Because Grace sees herself in a theatrical context, not a rock and roll context.

“I’m not the sort of person you call for when you want the normal artistic biopic to show on the Biography channel.

“I like ideas, and I like documenting moments, and that’s exactly what Grace wanted.

“She didn’t want a roll-call of people whom she didn’t know talking about her.

“For two hours, you came into Grace’s universe.”

Love her or leave her, you can’t help but be drawn when the grandmother who turns 70 this year, relishes her nudity.

While digging into a plate of oysters, she cackles, “I wish my pussy was this tight.”

The film’s release coincides with International Women’s Day on March 8, which celebrates women’s achievements throughout history and across nations.

It seems apt, given that Grace Jones was a free-roaming outspoken woman, the queen of the gay discos.

In one scene from Bloodlight and Bami, during rehearsals for a French TV appearance, Jones takes one look at the troupe of semi-naked women dancers and screams, “I look like the lesbian madam in a whorehouse! Are there any male dancers?”

Writer Barry Walters called her, “queer as a relatively straight person could get.

“Her image celebrated blackness and subverted gender norms; she presented something we had never seen before in pop performance—a woman who was lithe, sexy, and hyperfeminine while also exuding a ribald, butch swagger.”

Screenings at:

TASMANIA

CMax Devonport | Tasmania

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Event Innaloo | Innaloo

NEW SOUTH WALES

Brunswick Picture House | Brunswick Heads

Event Liverpool | Sydney

Greater Union Newcastle | Newcastle

GU Film House Cronulla | Sydney

Greater Union Shellharbour | Illawarra

Event Tuggerah | Central Coast