Entertainment

Darlene Love Documentary Premieres at Toronto Festival

Jonah VillalbaPublished 7d ago2 min readBased on 5 sources
Darlene Love Documentary Premieres at Toronto Festival
source:tiff.net

'Darlene Love: I Know Where I've Been' premieres on Sunday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, after two years in production under director Barry Avrich. Variety spoke to Love, Avrich and producer Taraji P. Henson ahead of the screening and shared an exclusive first look at the trailer.

The documentary traces Love's six-decade career in popular music, from her early success as a defining voice of the 1960s to later work on screen and stage, according to Realscreen. Each holiday season, Love returned to David Letterman's late-night programmes to sing 'Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)'. She also co-starred in the 'Lethal Weapon' films and starred on Broadway in 'Hairspray', Variety reports.

Then the hits stopped. She cleaned houses in Beverly Hills. Musician Steven Van Zandt persuaded her to move to New York to start again, a turning point the film revisits, Variety reports.

Her fight for recognition reached a wide audience with '20 Feet From Stardom', the 2013 Oscar-winning film about backup singers that featured her story. The new film tells the longer arc in full and places it within the years of the civil rights movement, according to Realscreen.

Henson produced through her company TPH Entertainment, with Mark Selby and Avrich also credited as producers, according to a post on Love's official Facebook page. Avrich filmed new performances in a New York studio, with Love backed by a band led by Paul Shaffer, Variety reports. The comeback stuck.

Bruce Springsteen, Cher and Dionne Warwick appear in the film to pay tribute to Love, according to TIFF. The festival has programmed the documentary in TIFF Docs, its section for non-fiction films, with a listing for Scotia 12 at 10:00am on Sunday 13 September, according to TIFF.

What makes this stand out for a general audience is the mix of archive material and new performances recorded for the film. For newcomers, it lays out a six-decade career in one sitting. For longtime listeners, it adds the story behind the voice.

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