Boulder International Film Festival: Billie

Her tearful hit song about lynching—”Strange Fruit in the Southern Trees”—landed superstar Billie Holiday on J. Edgar Hoover’s enemies list for her lifetime. Now, this incredible film reveals a newly discovered treasure trove of interviews about Billie Holiday—all conducted in the 1970s by journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl. Over eight years, Linda recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the singer’s short, tumultuous life, including Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Count Basie, school friends, jail-mates, lawyers, pimps, and even the FBI agents who arrested her. But Linda’s book was never finished, and the tapes were never heard…until now. All of these gritty interviews are interwoven with soaring, astonishing performances by Billie Holiday herself—one of the greatest voices of all time.​

James Erskine in person