What Happened, Miss Simone?

What Happened, Miss Simone? is the story of Nina Simone's life and career. Through archival interviews, extensive performance footage, and new interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, it paints a fascinating portrait of this complex and challenging artist. Nina Simone was many things: pianist, singer, songwriter, performer, civil rights campaigner, wife and mother, victim of abuse and black icon. Growing up in the segregated American South, she began to learn piano at age 4, attended Juilliard School of Music in New York, and aspired to a career as a concert pianist. Believing she was denied admission to the Curtis Institute because of her race, she began to play in nightclubs to earn money, and her career as a jazz and blues performer was born. The film follows Nina Simone through the sixties and her intense involvement in the civil rights movement, her decision to relocate to first Africa and then Europe in the early seventies, her emotional difficulties in the eighties, and her later years in France in the nineties. This is a very timely documentary that reveals a performing artist’s advocacy for the black culture. (Gary Reber)