Ella’s “Just One of Those Things” – Musical portrait of Leslie Woodhead.
English-American music documentary, 90 minutes, 2019. – Subtitles in Hungarian language
Ella Fitzgerald was a 15 year-old street kid when she won a talent contest in 1934 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Within months she was a star. “Ella: Just One of Those Things” follows her extraordinary journey over six decades as her sublime voice transforms the tragedies of her own life and the troubles of her times into joy.
The film uses never-before-seen images and unheard interviews … Ella Fitzgerald to life and to tell the story of her music. – a black woman who makes her career in the face of horrifying racism.
Here is an Ella the world never knew – tough, thoughtful, funny, a dazzling musical innovator. The film uncovers Ella’s commitment to the battle for Civil Rights. It also explores the conflicts that always haunted this intensely private woman. the struggle to reconcile her hunger for adoring audiences with her longing for a domestic life with her husband and son. At a time when she was the biggest singing star in the world, her pianist and friend Oscar Peterson said Ella was “the loneliest woman in the world”. But as Jamie Cullum says “her music is one of the reasons it’s worth being on this planet”.
No one could scat like Ella did … This was a completely new language at that time. Ella Fitzgerald might not have invented the style of wordless singing — by the time she recorded „Oh Lady Be Good” in 1947, jazz singers had been scatting for more than two decades. In 1945 was the first year bebop exploded on the New York scene, and Ella, who had been a swing singer up until that time, had bigger ears than anyone had understood.
Featuring interviews within the movie: Tony Bennett, Jamie Cullum, Laura Mvula, Johnny Mathis, Smokey Robinson, Cleo Laine, Andre Previn, Norma Miller, Patti Austin, Izsak Perlman, Margo Jefferson, Will Friedwald and a rare interview with Ella’s son, Ray Brown Jr.
Perhaps it is easy to forget that Ella, who died 21 years ago, was first and last a jazz singer, but for the Jazz lovers will never be forgotten and now their day has come to sit back, relax, enjoy through the screen listening to Ella Fitzgerald who was one of the most celebrated singers of her generation.
Local and foreigner staying in Budapest or in another city in Hungary may have a little jazz stream into their hearts.
The documentary shooting throughout Hungary from November, 7. 2019.
Distributor: Pannónia Entertainment Ltd.
Update Aggie Reiter
Rolling in Budapest 