A Netflix Documentary A RadicalMedia Production In Association with Moxie Firecracker

WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?

A Film by Liz Garbus

Sundance Press Contact: Susan Norget Film Promotion Susan Norget / Rob Scheer NY: 212-431-0090 / Cell: 917-833-3056 [email protected] / [email protected] SYNOPSIS

Classically trained pianist, dive-bar chanteuse, black power icon and legendary recording artist, Nina Simone lived a life of brutal honesty, musical genius and tortured melancholy. In this epic documentary, director Liz Garbus interweaves never-before-heard recordings and rare archival footage together with Nina’s most memorable songs, to create an unforgettable portrait of one of the least understood, yet most beloved, artists of our time.

WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? uses recently unearthed audiotapes, recorded over the course of three decades, of Nina telling her life story to various interviewers and would-be biographers. From over 100 hours of these recordings, the film weaves together Nina’s narrative, told largely in her own words. Rare concert footage and archival interviews, along with diaries, letters, interviews with Nina’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, friends and collaborators, along with other exclusive materials, make this the most authentic, personal and unflinching telling of the extraordinary life of one of the 20th century’s greatest recording artists.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

What happened, Miss Simone? Specifically, what happened to your big eyes that quickly veil to hide the loneliness? To your voice, that has so little tenderness, yet overflows with your commitment to the battle of Life? What happened to you?

– Dr. Maya Angelou, 1970, Redbook magazine

I started making films in the late 1990s in prisons. First, at Louisiana State Penitentiary, a slave plantation turned maximum-security prison. After The Farm, I went westward to Oklahoma, where I made a film called The Execution of Wanda Jean, about the first African-American woman to be executed by the United States in the modern era of capital punishment. Other films explored social justice and the criminal justice system, like Girlhood, about girls in and out of juvenile institutions in Baltimore, and Shouting Fire, about the price of preserving freedom of speech. And then I moved from the prisons of America into prisons of the mind. I made a film about the mad genius of Bobby Fischer in Bobby Fischer Against The World, and then the story of the inner world of a fierce yet fragile woman named Marilyn Monroe, in Love, Marilyn. I draw this trajectory because it all feels very clear to me now that this work was leading to this one new place, this one new film – the story of a little understood but much-loved genius named Nina Simone.

In What Happened, Miss Simone?, all the themes I had been exploring in documentaries for 15 years have merged symphonically in one extraordinary life. Nina Simone's brilliance would forever change the musical landscape and yet she never fully got her due. She struggled against demons from both within and without, and her life was both a reflection of the legacy of racism in America as well as an extraordinary example of the power a righteous voice can bring to bear against even the most wicked historical legacies. I didn’t know it at the outset, but it is clear to me now that What Happened, Miss Simone? is the film I had been practicing my whole life to make.

The project came to me from Justin Wilkes at RadicalMedia, who had been approached by Nina’s only child, Lisa Simone Kelly, and the Estate of Nina Simone, to produce a film about Nina. After years of considering various projects and pitches from filmmakers, they were finally ready to allow Nina’s story to be told. I had always been a huge fan of Nina’s music – my husband will recall I had her album “Little Girl Blue” playing the first time he came over to my apartment for dinner – but I didn’t know her life story. When Radical reached out to me, I picked up her autobiography, “I Put A Spell on You,” written by Nina with the help of Stephen Cleary. I read it in two hours. I was spellbound. This was my dream project.

Once I began speaking to those who knew Nina, I began to see her as a brilliant gem with many facets, some more craggy than others. Through conversations with Lisa, I began to appreciate how tough it was to grow up as Nina’s daughter. In talking to her closest friends, like Gerrit de Bruin and Al Schackman, I came to understand both her intense charisma and loyalty, as well as the fact that she could shift instantly, without warning, towards rage and mistrust. In talking to her musicians and colleagues, I learned yet another side – a startling, once-in-a-lifetime kind of musical genius that defied classification. And underneath it all, I discovered the child prodigy who had grown up under the tutelage of white matrons in the Jim Crow South, cut off from normal social life and relations, who chafed for most of her life from untreated and undiagnosed mental illness. Nina herself lived a life of unflinching honesty. I needed, with this film, to strive for that level of complexity. How to tell this story, and be true to all these facets of her, in a narrative of approximately 100 minutes? The answer, for me, was to start with HER. Her voice. So, along with my extraordinary team of producers, we began to comb the earth for all remnants of Nina telling her story. Radio interviews, TV interviews, backstage chats at performances… Diaries, letters, notebooks left behind… At some point in October, 2013, about a month into research, it occurred to me: Could Stephen Cleary, the co-writer of her autobiography, have taped his conversations with her? I tracked him down – he was at that moment working in Australia – and after several unanswered emails he finally responded. Did he tape the interviews with Nina that were the basis of her autobiography? Yes. Did he still have those tapes? Hard to know. But if they existed, they would be in his home in France, in the Pyrenees, where he would not return for several weeks. Upon his return home, my pestering unanswered emails continued, until finally, on New Year’s Day, 2014, I got an email from him with the subject: “Happy New Year’s News.” He had found the tapes – 25.5 hours of Nina talking about her life. My producer, Amy Hobby, was soon on a plane to France with her DAT machine to copy and protect Stephen’s archive.

This only made us more determined. Hadn’t she spent time with some University of Nebraska students in the late 1960s, who were writing about her, and had they kept their tapes? Hadn’t she started to work on her autobiography in the 1970s, only to abandon that project? What happened to those tapes? Of course, visual materials were very much in our sights as well. We re-mastered the work print of a 1968 NYU student film, shot at the New York club the Village Gate, in order to view every frame of Nina from that era. We visited a friend of Nina’s in Switzerland who kept pictures from their years together in a shack in the woods a few hours outside of Zurich. We found never-before-seen interviews with her late husband from an aborted documentary project. It didn’t all come up roses – there was heartbreak along the way. Chief amongst them was the fire that destroyed the dailies and outtakes from the 1968 student film. But I can say with some confidence that we left no Nina stone unturned; it was a worldwide scavenger hunt covering 40 years of materials.

Focusing on Nina’s own voice also led me to decide to keep the number of interviews I would conduct very limited. While many famous musicians have credited Nina as a key artistic influence, I didn’t want to make a biopic with celebrities talking about other celebrities. I wanted to talk only to those whose recollections would feel as intimate as the incredible archival recording we had unearthed. I wanted this to be the inside story, coming purely from Nina’s own voice and those in her life who knew her most closely. Working with cinematographer Igor Martinovic, we developed a shooting style for the interviews that would keep them feeling tied to the archival world of the film, finding the one Cooke lens in the U.S. that still had uncoated glass.

Bringing this film into the world now, in January 2015, I am aware of the ripeness of this historical moment. A spark has been re-ignited in the civil rights movement by the high-profile killings of unarmed black men by the white police. In recent months, the streets of Ferguson, Missouri looked not unlike those of Selma, Mississippi, where Nina played, amidst threats of mortal danger, her rousing anthem “Mississippi Goddam.” Late in her life, Nina mourned the death of the movement, and of its leaders, lamenting that her civil rights songs were not relevant anymore. Today, “Mississippi Goddam” feels as relevant as ever. I wish she were here to inspire us with her music, her incisive words and unrelenting commitment to truth and justice. As Maya Angelou summed up in her article about Nina in Redbook: “She is loved or feared, adored or disliked, but few who have met her music or glimpsed her soul react with moderation. She is an extremist, extremely realized.” I wonder if it’s too much to hope that in witnessing her life, other artists may be moved to step into the great void she left behind.

– Liz Garbus NINA SIMONE BIOGRAPHY

Raw, passionate and provocative, Nina Simone was one of the most legendary artists of the 20th century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate live performer who could spellbind her audience into an almost religious reverie. Her distinctly emotional style had an appeal that crossed race and gender boundaries, while blending elements of jazz, gospel, blues, soul, folk and classical music. But she was as well known for her outspoken politics and tempestuous presence, on and off the stage, as for her immense talent.

When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of music spanning more than four decades and forty albums, from her first hit, the 1959 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – an approach that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark.

Born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s natural gift of music. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms and Beethoven. After graduating at the top of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study music at the Juilliard School in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to Philadelphia, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African-American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she would claim that racism was the reason she was rejected.

To survive, she began teaching music to local students. In 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of George Gershwin, Cole Porter and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues and classical music. Her rich vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club-goers up and down the East Coast. To hide the fact from her family that she was singing in bars, Eunice Waymon took the stage name Nina Simone – “Nina” came from a nickname meaning "little one" in Spanish, and "Simone" after the actress Simone Signoret.

Nina began recording music in the late 1950s under the Bethlehem label. Her first full album in 1958, "Little Girl Blue,” included one of her few Top 40 hits, her version of "I Loves You Porgy" from the Gershwin musical “Porgy and Bess.” At the same New York City recording session, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nat King Cole and Count Basie, which became a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career.

Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short-lived and in 1959, after moving to New York City, she was signed by Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s “The Amazing Nina Simone”), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the prestigious Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her signature for decades.

As Nina’s reputation as a dynamic live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. She was accompanied on the June, 1960 show by a trio that included Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague. Soon after, she met another man who would be central to her life – New York police detective Andy Stroud, who she married in December of 1961 and who would later become her manager as well as the father of her only child, Lisa.

Nina’s many Colpix recordings from 1959 to 1964 cemented her appeal to a nightclub-based U.S. audience. They included her version of the blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out,” the soulful “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch song “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Color Of My True Love’s Hair” – all eclectic examples of Nina Simone at her storytelling best. Her music defied standard definitions, but Nina’s classical training showed through, no matter what genre of song she played. She was often called the "High Priestess of Soul,” but was said to dislike that nickname. She didn't like the label of "jazz singer" either. "If I had to be called something, it should have been a folk singer because there was more folk and blues than jazz in my playing," she later wrote.

Once Nina left Colpix and moved to the Dutch-owned Phillips label, she was ready to expand her following globally and raise her voice politically. On her 1964 debut album for Philips, “Nina Simone in Concert” (from her first performances at Carnegie Hall), Nina openly addressed the country’s racial inequality with the song "Mississippi Goddam," her impassioned response to the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers and the Alabama church bombing that killed four young African-American girls. "Old Jim Crow," on the same album, addressed the Jim Crow laws. "Mississippi Goddam" was banned throughout the South, but this response made no difference to Nina’s unyielding commitment to the civil rights movement. She performed the song at one of the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama in 1965, and subsequent groundbreaking recordings of “Four Women” and “Strange Fruit” continued to keep her in the forefront as one of the few performers willing to use music as a vehicle for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, Nina performed "Why (The King of Love Is Dead)." She also wrote "Young, Gifted and Black," borrowing the title of a play by Lorraine Hansberry, which became a popular black anthem at the time and reached #10 on the Billboard R&B chart.

As Nina was cementing her status in the ‘60s as a leading civil rights activist (Stokely Carmichael proclaimed her the voice of the movement), she was also producing some of her best-known songs and at the same time expressing a growing disenchantment with the music industry. Among her most significant recordings of that period were signature songs such as “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “I Put A Spell On You” (#23 on the Billboard R&B chart), “Ne me quitte pas” and “Sinnerman.” After she signed with RCA Records in 1967, one of her very first recordings for the label was the sensual “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl.” By this time, Nina had become closely involved with a circle of African- American playwrights, poets and writers all centered in Harlem that included Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes (with whom she wrote “The Backlash Blues”) and James Baldwin.

Nina’s seven years with RCA produced some remarkable recordings, ranging from two songs featured in the Broadway musical “Hair” (combined into a medley, “Ain’t Got No, I Got Life”) to a Simone-ified version of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun,” which remained in Nina’s repertoire all the way through to her final performance in 2002. Along the way at RCA, songs penned by Bob Dylan (“Just Like A Woman”), the brothers Gibb (“To Love Somebody”), and Tina Turner (“Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter”) took pride of place alongside the older works in her songbook.

As the 1960s drew to a close, Nina tired of the American music scene and the country's deeply divided racial politics. Her marriage to Andy Stroud also came to an end; they divorced in 1971. In the 1970s and early ‘80s she lived in several different countries, including Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland, England and the Netherlands, eventually settling in France. During this period she struggled with her finances and clashed with managers, record labels and the Internal Revenue Service. Though always known as a mercurial, unpredictable performer, her behavior onstage and off became increasingly volatile, and in the late ‘80s she was diagnosed as bipolar.

In 1974, she recorded her last album for RCA, “It Is Finished.” Nina did not make another record until 1978, when the head of CTI Records persuaded her to make the album “Baltimore,” which, while not a commercial success, marked a quiet artistic renaissance in her recording output. Four years later she recorded “Fodder on My Wings” for a French record label. During the 1980s, Nina performed regularly at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, where in 1984 she recorded the album “Live at Ronnie Scott's.” In 1987, the original 1958 recording of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" was used in a commercial for Chanel No. 5 perfume in the United Kingdom, giving her a brief surge in popularity in Europe. She recorded her last album, “A Single Woman,” in 1993 and continued to tour through the ‘90s, maintaining a strong fan base that filled concert halls whenever she performed.

In her 1992 autobiography, “I Put a Spell on You,” Nina Simone wrote that her function as an artist was “…to make people feel on a deep level. It’s difficult to describe because it’s not something you can analyze; to get near what it’s about you have to play it. And when you’ve caught it, when you’ve got the audience hooked, you always know because it’s like electricity hanging in the air.” It was that very electricity that made her such an important artist to so many. Her music still resonates with great power and emotion.

Nina Simone died of breast cancer at her home in Carry-le-Rouet, France on April 21, 2003. Her funeral service was attended by Miriam Makeba, Patti Labelle, poet Sonia Sanchez, actor Ossie Davis, and hundreds of others. Two days before her death, The Curtis Institute of Philadelphia – the music school that had rejected her – awarded Nina an honorary diploma. FILMMAKER BIOGRAPHIES

LIZ GARBUS, Director / Producer

Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning producer/director Liz Garbus is one of America’s most prominent documentary filmmakers.

Garbus’ film Love, Marilyn screened as a Gala Premiere at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival. Featuring the voices of Uma Thurman, Adrien Brody, Viola Davis, Ben Foster, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, F. Murray Abraham, Ellen Burstyn and other actors, the film was acquired by HBO and aired in 2013. In 2011, her Bobby Fischer Against the World opened the Premiere Documentary section of the Sundance Film Festival. The film earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Best Non-Fiction Special and won the prestigious UK Grierson Award for Best Cinema Documentary. Her first documentary, The Farm: Angola, USA, made in collaboration with Jonathan Stack, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, was awarded ten other festival and critics’ awards, and was nominated for an Oscar in 1999.

Following The Farm’s success, Garbus co-founded Moxie Firecracker Films with producer/director Rory Kennedy. With Garbus directing and Kennedy producing, the two made the 2001 feature-length documentary Girlhood. In 2002, Garbus’ documentary The Execution of Wanda Jean premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired later that year on HBO. In 2005, she and Kennedy executive- produced Street Fight (PBS), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In 2006, Moxie Firecracker collaborated with Rosie Perez to produce Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’Que Tu Lo Sepas (IFC). Garbus and Kennedy’s credits also include Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which premiered at Sundance and won the Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special of 2007; Coma, which aired on HBO in 2007; and as producers of the Academy Award-nominated 2010 short, Killing in the Name. Garbus’ other directorial credits include The Nazi Officer’s Wife, narrated by Susan Sarandon and Julia Ormond (A&E); Xiara’s Song (HBO); Shouting Fire: Stories From the Edge of Free Speech (Sundance, HBO); and There’s Something Wrong With Aunt Diane (HBO). Her most recent documentary, A Good Job: Stories of the FDNY, which she produced with actor Steve Buscemi, aired on HBO in September of 2014.

AMY HOBBY, Producer

Amy Hobby has twenty years of experience as an award-winning feature and documentary film producer. Hobby’s reputation for awards-driven filmmaking began with a series of narrative films that includes Nadja (Sundance, October Films), produced alongside David Lynch; Sunday (Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Un Certain Regard at Cannes); Hamlet (Sundance, Miramax), starring Ethan Hawke, Bill Murray and Sam Shepard; Secretary (Sundance Jury Prize, Lionsgate), starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was nominated for an Golden Globe Award for her role; and 13 Conversations About One Thing (Toronto, Sony Pictures Classics), starring Matthew McConaughey. More recently, she was one of the producers of Lucky Them (Toronto, IFC Films), starring Toni Collette, Thomas Haden Church and Johnny Depp.

Hobby’s documentary producing credits include And Everything Is Going Fine, directed by Steven Soderbergh; Shepard & Dark (Music Box Films); and Love, Marilyn (Telluride, Toronto, HBO) with director Liz Garbus.

In 2013, Hobby co-founded Tangerine Entertainment, a company that produces and builds audiences for films directed by women. Tangerine is currently producing Paint It Black, directed by Amber Tamblyn and starring Janet McTeer.

JUSTIN WILKES, Producer

As the president of RadicalMedia's entertainment group and as an accomplished producer himself, Justin Wilkes has extensive experience in television production, live entertainment, digital platforms, feature films, documentaries and episodic TV. Under his leadership and fourteen-year history with the company, RadicalMedia has pushed the art of storytelling across multiple forms of media, and is constantly exploring and expanding the traditional boundaries, in collaboration with creative talent, networks, studios, brands and agencies.

Recent executive producer and producer credits include the Academy Award and Emmy-nominated documentary, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory for HBO; the Emmy-winning Paul Simon/Graceland documentary, Under African Skies for A&E Films; the Jay Z/Ron Howard documentary, Made In America for Showtime; ESPN’s “30 for 30” Bo Jackson documentary, You Don’t Know Bo; five seasons of the Emmy-nominated OWN series, Oprah’s Master Class; six seasons of Iconoclasts for Sundance Channel; David Blaine’s Real or Magic for ABC; Joe Berlinger’s Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger for CNN Films; Sting: The Last Ship for PBS Great Performances; and the Emmy- nominated AOL series, Park Bench with Steve Buscemi.

Wilkes has been the recipient of numerous industry accolades, including multiple Cannes Lions, Clios, an NAACP award, an IDA nomination and three primetime Emmy Award nominations.

JAYSON JACKSON, Producer

Jayson Jackson began his career in the entertainment industry at Def Jam Records, where he was responsible for creating Grammy campaigns, including a Grammy win for the song “You’re All I Need to Get By,” by Method Man and Mary J. Blige. He continued to apply his promotional expertise as head of marketing at Sean Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment. Jackson went on to manage Lauryn Hill through the launch of her solo debut “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” which was nominated for 10 Grammys and won 5 (including Album of the Year). He also managed slam poet champion Sarah Jones, and produced her award-winning Off-Broadway play, bridge and tunnel (on which Meryl Streep served as executive producer). bridge and tunnel eventually moved to Broadway, where it received a special Tony Award. Jackson also produced (alongside Spike Lee) Lemon Andersen’s County of Kings at The Public Theater.

Jackson began consulting with the Estate of Nina Simone in 2012, and his dream of honoring her life and music came to fruition when he began work on What Happened, Miss Simone?.

LISA SIMONE KELLY, Executive Producer

Lisa Simone Kelly, better known as Simone and Lisa Simone in entertainment circles, is a United States Air Force veteran, singer, composer, Grammy award nominee, award-winning actress, and the only child of Nina Simone. Her career in the entertainment industry began over 20 years ago in Frankfurt Germany, while serving in the military. Kelly originated the Disney roles of both Aida (Aida) and Nala (The Lion King) and won the National Broadway Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Musical in the lead role of Aida while heading up its first national tour. She continued in the role at New York’s Palace Theatre to much critical acclaim (Variety/ Billboard). A member of the original Broadway cast of Rent in the role of Mimi Marquez, Kelly garnered nominations for the Helen Hayes and Jefferson Awards. She was nominated for a Grammy Award as a member of Liquid Soul for their album “Here’s The Deal,” and has continued to blaze a trail from New York’s Carnegie and Town Halls and Australia’s Sydney Opera House alongside Dianne Reeves, Angelique Kidjo, Odetta and Tracy Chapman, to headlining worldwide jazz festivals in Telluride, Montreux, the North Sea and Paris. Kelly was a featured performer on the soundtrack of Tyler Perry’s movie For Colored Girls and topped the jazz charts with her big band tribute album to her mother, “Simone On Simone.”

Lisa Simone Kelly is on tour supporting her album “All Is Well,” currently number 4 on FNAC’s jazz charts, to sold-out venues across Europe. She will be recording a sophomore Nina Simone tribute album with the Tromso Big Band, live at The Edge in Tromso, Norway in January 2015.

JOSHUA L. PEARSON, Editor

Joshua L. Pearson’s filmmaking career began with Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN), a multimedia music video performance group formed in 1991. Signed to TVT Records, EBN created multi-channel video projection performances in diverse venues ranging from The Limelight to Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. EBN also created multi-channel projections for U2's ZooTV and Zooropa tours and collaborated with U2 on an audio/video remix of "Numb" in 1993. EBN’s first and only full-length release, “Telecommunication Breakdown” in 1995, included collaborations with producers Brian Eno and Bill Laswell.

Pearson has since edited a broad range of commercials and long-form episodic television for RadicalMedia and, in recent years, edited a succession of documentary films. These include: two films for director Joe Berlinger, Under African Skies and Whitey: The United States vs. James J. Bulger, both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (in 2012 and 2014 respectively); and Made In America, directed by Ron Howard, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2013. Pearson continues to compose music and scores some of the productions he edits.

IGOR MARTINOVIC, Director of Photography

Igor Martinovic is a New York-based cinematographer of feature and documentary films. Martinovic shot the Academy Award-winning documentary Man on Wire, about the famous tightrope walker Philippe Petit, which also won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film as well as the 2008 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award. In 2014, Martinovic was nominated for an Emmy Award for his cinematography work on the second season of the Netflix series House of Cards. His other work of note includes Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner Sangre De Mi Sangre; Red Riding: 1980; Silent House, starring Elizabeth Olsen; Sunlight Jr., starring Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon; and BBC’s Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh.

RACHEL MORRISON, Director of Photography

Director of photography Rachel Morrison has two films premiering at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival: Director Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope and Liz Garbus’ What Happened, Miss Simone?. Her previous films that have premiered at Sundance include Fruitvale Station, Sound of My Voice and Little Accidents. Cake, which Morrison lensed for director Daniel Barnz, premiered at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival. The film stars Jennifer Aniston, Anna Kendrick and Sam Worthington and will open nationwide in January of 2015.

Morrison’s feature credits also include Any Day Now, which premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award; The Harvest, a thriller starring Samantha Morton and Michael Shannon; and Neil Labute’s Some Girl(s), directed by Daisy von Mayer and starring Adam Brody, Emily Watson, Zoe Kazan, Kristin Bell, Mia Maestro and Jennifer Morrison.

ABOUT NETFLIX

Netflix is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 53 million members in nearly 50 countries enjoying more than two billion hours of TV shows and movies per month, including original series, documentaries and feature films. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any Internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments.

What Happened, Miss Simone? is the network’s first commissioned Original Documentary. Other Netflix Original Documentaries include 2014's multi-Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated The Square and the recently Oscar-nominated Virunga.

ABOUT RADICAL MEDIA

RadicalMedia, a global studio, has produced a number of films telling nuanced, multi-faceted stories including: the Academy Award and Independent Spirit Award-winning documentary The Fog of War; the Grammy-winning Concert for George; Under African Skies, the Emmy Award-winning documentary examining the making of the groundbreaking and controversial Paul Simon record “Graceland”; the Ron Howard-helmed Jay Z documentary Made in America; and Whitey: The United States vs. James J. Bulger, Joe Berlinger’s latest film that chronicles the trial of crime boss, Whitey Bulger. A Netflix Documentary

A Radical Media Production

In Association with Moxie Firecracker

WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?

Director LIZ GARBUS

Producers AMY HOBBY LIZ GARBUS JUSTIN WILKES JAYSON JACKSON

Executive Producers SIDNEY BEAUMONT (RadicalMedia) JON KAMEN

Executive Producers LISA NISHIMURA (Netflix) ADAM DEL DEO

Executive Producer LISA SIMONE KELLY

Editor JOSHUA L. PEARSON

Cinematography IGOR MARTINOVIC RACHEL MORRISON

Consulting Producer PETER RODIS Associate Producer ADRIENNE COLLATOS Line Producer JOSEPH MALLOCH

Consultants STEPHEN CLEARY JOE HAGAN ALLYSON LUCHAK Archival Producer MARY RECINE Researcher SUSAN HORMUTH

POST PRODUCTION SERVICES – OUTPOST DIGITAL

Managing Director LIZ FRIESELL MASON Post Production Producer JENNIFER HELM Post Production Supervisor KIMBERLY RUDOLPH Post Production Coordinator ALAINA DELY

Main Title Sequence CHRIS RUBINO Assistant Editor TIM MOYLE Colorist YOHANCE BROWN Online/VFX Artist ROSS VINCENT Graphics Artists MANYA KUZEMCHENKO JONATHAN LEONG CRAIG LACOMBE

AUDIO POST PRODUCTION – TVO POST & SOUND LOUNGE

Supervising Sound Editor/ TONY VOLANTE Re-recording Mixer Sound Designer DAN TIMMONS Sound Facility Coordinator ROB BROWNING

Music Clearance EVAN M. GREENSPAN, INC. Music Rights Executive KEVIN MAGOWAN

Classical Recordings JADE SIMMONS Additional Music JOE MCGINTY JOSHUA L. PEARSON

INTERVIEWEES:

LISA SIMONE KELLY - Nina’s Daughter

ROGER NUPIE - Friend

AL SCHACKMAN - Nina’s Guitarist / Musical Director

GEORGE WEIN - Founder, Newport Jazz Festival

STANLEY CROUCH - Cultural Critic

DICK GREGORY - Entertainer / Activist

ILYASAH SHABAZZ - Daughter of Betty Shabazz & Malcolm X

AMBASSADOR SHABAZZ - Eldest Shabazz Daughter

GERRIT DE BRUIN - Friend

THE APPEARANCE OF NINA SIMONE IS BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE ESTATE OF NINA SIMONE, COURTESY OF STEVEN AMES BROWN

AUDIO RECORDINGS COURTESY OF: AUDIO FROM NINA SIMONE INTERVIEW WITH DICK HUBERT ON NOVEMBER 12, 1967 FROM CELEBRITY’S CHOICE, COURTESY OF DICK HUBERT PRODUCTIONS © 2014 VIDEOWARE CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION. AUDIO FOR “NINA SIMONE - LIVE AT RONNIE SCOTT’S” COURTESY OF ROB LEMKIN ERIC KULBERG FRANK LORDS GENERAL COMMISSION ON ARCHIVES AND HISTORY OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, HARPERAUDIO HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHER INDIANA UNIVERSITY, ARCHIVES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSIC AND CULTURE JULIE RISHER MARY MARTIN NIEPOLD UNIVERSAL MEDIA, INC.

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE COURTESY OF: HARLEM CULTURAL FESTIVAL AND HAL TULCHIN ABCNEWS VIDEOSOURCE COURTESY OF STEVEN AMES BROWN ARCHIVE FILMS/GETTY IMAGES RECORDED AT THE MONTREUX JAZZ ASSOCIATED PRESS FESTIVAL AV GEEKS BBC BROADCAST ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES MUSIQUES AU COEUR.LES VOIX NOIRES BETSY SCHECHTER & JERRY KUPFER ARIANE ADRIANI, INSTITUT NATIONAL DE BO DENNIS NIELSEN L’AUDIOVISUEL CREATIVE ARTS TELEVISION MYFOOTAGE.COM NINA SIMONE Á L’OLYMPIA. BERNARD LION, ADDITIONAL CONCERT FOOTAGE INSTITUT NATIONAL DE L’AUDIOVISUEL BY THE ESTATE OF NINA SIMONE @ NDR DISTRIBUTED BY STUDIO HAMBURG AND RICH AND FAMOUS RECORDS LTD., DISTRIBUTION & MARKETING GMBH COURTESY OF STEVEN AMES BROWN NBCUNIVERSAL ARCHIVES NHNZ MOVING eFOOTAGE, LLC. USED BY PERMISSION. IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM FILM ARCHIVES, INC. PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES FOOTAGE FARM POND 5/NAO THARP H. LEE WATERS POND 5/FIKFILM HEBDO CHANSON HEBDO MUSIQUE POND 5/EARTH UNCUT PRODUCTIONS LTD. GEORGES BARRIER, POND 5/MR SPILBERG INSTITUT NATIONAL DE L’AUDIOVISUEL POND 5/ZR MEDIA HISTORIC FILMS ARCHIVE POND 5/ALISTER CHAPMAN HUNTLEY FILM ARCHIVES LTD. QUATRE TEMPS. MICHELE ARNAUD, ITN SOURCE INSTITUT NATIONAL DE L’AUDIOVISUEL JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY, LLC. REELIN’ IN THE YEARS PRODUCTIONS, LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. RETRO VIDEO, INC. RICK RAY/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM MONTREUX FOOTAGE LICENSED FROM STEFAN SHARFF RICH & FAMOUS RECORDS, LTD. AND THE STORMSTOCK ESTATE OF NINA SIMONE,

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF: © ALFRED WERTHEIMER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AFP/GETTY IMAGES CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART/GETTY ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES IMAGES ASSOCIATED PRESS BERNARD GOTFRYD CORBIS IMAGES DAVID ATTIE NINA 1959 PHOTOS BY HERB SNITZER FRANCES WAYMON PARIS MATCH ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES FOX GEORGE DYCK GERRIT DE BRUIN PHOTO BY GIN BRIGGS GILES DAMAN USE COURTESY OF LORRAINE © GUY LE QUERREC/MAGNUM PHOTOS HANSBERRY JEANNE MILLER LITERARY TRUST AND JOI GRESHAM JOHN LAUNOIS JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY, LLC. PHOTOFEST INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PROMETHEUS GLOBAL MEDIA © 2014 KEN REGAN/CAMERA 5 RON DICKEY KEN STEINHOFF MATTHIAS LAMPE ROY LEWIS MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES THE CURTIS INSTITUTE OF MUSIC MOORLAND-SPINGARN THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY RESEARCH CENTER, HOWARD UNIVERSITY IMAGES VERSE MUSIC GROUP

OTHER MATERIALS: MALCOLM X PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, STATE GOVERNORS’ NEGATIVE SCHOMBURG CENTER COLLECTION, 1949-1975, FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE WASHINGTON STATE ARCHIVE

THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA THE TRYON DAILY BULLETIN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

MUSIC (in order of appearance)

GOOD KING WENCESLAS I WISH I KNEW HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO BE FREE Traditional Written by Billy Taylor & Dick Dallas Published by Duane Music, Inc. (ASCAP) Administered by 1630 Music Publishing Services, Inc. Unicorn Music Company/ASCAP

CHILDREN GO WHERE I SEND YOU NOBODY’S FAULT BUT MINE Written by Nina Simone Written by Nina Simone Published by Unicorn Music Company/ASCAP Published by EMI Waterford Music, Inc./ASCAP Courtesy of Rhino Entertainment Company Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of RCA Records By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Courtesy of Steven Ames Brown Licensing By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing

BROWN BABY LITTLE LIZA JANE Written by Oscar Brown Jr. Written by Nina Simone Published by Edward B. Marks Music Co./BMI Published by WB Music Corp./ASCAP Bootblack Publishing Company/BMI Courtesy of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

FOR ALL WE KNOW I LOVES YOU PORGY FROM “PORGY AND BESS” Published by EMI Feist Catalog, Inc./ASCAP, Written by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Toy Town Tunes, Inc./ASCAP DuBose Heyward and Dorothy Heyward Courtesy Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Published by Dubose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Bienstock Publishing Company (ASCAP) Fund/ASCAP, George Gershwin Music/ASCAP, On Behalf Of Redwood Music LTD. (PRS) Ira Gershwin Music/ASCAP Courtesy of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Imagem Music LLC/ASCAP, Songs Music Publishing LLC

MY BABY JUST CARES FOR ME Written by Gus Kahn, Walter Donaldson IF YOU KNEW Published by WB Music Corp. o/b/o itself Written by Nina Simone Gilbert Keyes Music Co./ASCAP Published by WB Music Corp./ASCAP Courtesy of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Courtesy of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Donaldson Publishing Co./ASCAP Courtesy of Rhino Entertainment Company Performed by Nina Simone By Arrangement with Warner Music Group Originally recorded for Bethlehem Records © 1958 Film & TV Licensing License courtesy of Verse Music Group

LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME I PUT A SPELL ON YOU Written by Gus Kahn, Walter Donaldson Written by Jay Hawkins Published by WB Music Corp/ASCAP Published by EMI Unart Catalog, Inc./BMI Courtesy of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of The Verve Music Group Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

WORK SONG MISSISSIPPI GODDAM Composed by Nathaniel Adderley, Oscar Brown Jr. Written by Nina Simone Published by UPAM Music Co., Published by WB Music Corp./ASCAP A division of Gopam Enterpries, Inc. Courtesy of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of The Verve Music Group Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN Traditional

STRANGE FRUIT Written by Lewis Allan Published by E.B. Marks Music Corp./BMI, Music Sales Corporation/ASCAP THE BACKLASH BLUES Performed by Nina Simone Written by Nina Simone, Langston Hughes Courtesy of The Verve Music Group Published by EMI Waterford Music, Inc./ASCAP Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK Written by Nina Simone, Weldon J. Irvine, Jr. Published by EMI Grove Park Music, Inc./BMI I GOT LIFE Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of RCA Records Written by Gerome Ragni, James Rado, Courtesy of Steven Ames Brown Galt MacDermot By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing Published by EMI U Catalog, Inc./ASCAP

DON’T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD Written by Bennie Benjamin, Sol Marcus, GloriaCaldwell Published by Chris-N-Jen Music/ASCAP,and WB Music Corp./ASCAP, Bennie Benjamin Music, Inc./ASCAP, Chappell & Co. Inc./ASCAP, ARE YOU READY? Rose Marcus/ASCAP, Claude A Music Co./ASCAP Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

WHY? (THE KING OF LOVE IS DEAD) DON’T SMOKE IN BED Written by Calvin Taylor Written by Willard Robison Published by EMI Grove Park Music, Inc./BMI Published by Universal Music Corp./ASCAP Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of RCA Records Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of Steven Ames Brown Originally recorded for Bethlehem Records © 1958 By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing License courtesy of Verse Music Group

WESTWIND STARS Written by Caiphus Semenya, William Salter Written by Janis Ian Published by BMG Ruby Songs/ASCAP Published by Toasongs Two/BMI and Antisia Music/ASCAP Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of RCA Records Courtesy of Steven Ames Brown By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing

VOUS ETES SEULS, YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE MAIS JE DESIRE ETRE AVEC VOUS Written by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II Written and performed by Nina Simone Published by Williamson Music Company/ASCAP Performed by Nina Simone Originally recorded for Bethlehem Records © 1958 License courtesy of Verse Music Group

SINNERMAN Written by Nina Simone Published by WB Music Corp/ASCAP Courtesy of Warner / Chappell Music, Inc. Performed by Nina Simone Courtesy of The Verve Music Group Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

Copyright © 2014 @radical.media LLC and The Estate of Nina Simone. All Rights Reserved.

Technical Information: Duration - 102 min. Screening format - DCP Shooting format - 16mm, Alexa Audio - 5.1 Surround

Distribution & Production Partners: Publicity North America, Latin America, UK/IE, Netherlands, Nordics, France, Germany: Karen Barragan, Netflix Originals ([email protected])

North American Affiliates: East Coast - Susan Norget Film Promotion - Susan Norget ([email protected]) West Coast - Ginsberg Libby - Chris Libby ([email protected])