Under the spell of Nina Simone

Her camera has tracked inmates living on a former slave plantation turned prison farm, a Jewish fugitive who married a Nazi, the eccentric chess master Bobby Fischer, mothers with mental impairment and, most recently, chanteuse and civil rights activist Nina Simone. If there is a common thread linking the films of documentarian Liz Garbus, that thread is pretty close to invisible.

“I love going into a story that you think you know and showing you the other side,” Garbus said. “For me, it’s always about what’s the next great subject. I want to keep myself challenged and enlivened.”

The New York-raised Garbus found that challenge in Simone, the subject of the Netflix-produced documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” Garbus worked with the late singer-songwriter’s estate and gained access to rare concert footage, as well as interviews with Simone and her ex-husband. The film, released in theaters in June of last year, earned Garbus her second Oscar nomination for best documentary feature.

Garbus said she listened to and admired Simone’s music while in college. When she was approached by representatives of Radical Media about doing a documentary about Simone, Garbus was intrigued, but she felt she needed to know the story behind the music before deciding whether this project was in her wheelhouse.

Upon reading Simone’s autobiography, “I Put a Spell on You,” Garbus realized she had a fascinating protagonist. 

A still from Garbus' documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” 

“Her music and her struggles and trials are as relevant today as they were back then,” Garbus said of Simone, who died in 2003 at 70. “I pitched myself as a director. It was Nina’s daughter, Lisa, and her manager, Jayson Jackson, who thought I would be a good fit.”

Why?

“For them, I think, it was based on the past work I had done,” Garbus said. “My films ‘The Farm: Angola USA’ and my film about the complex genius Bobby Fischer — I saw some parallels to the Nina Simone story. I did some deep digging, and I walked in and talked about understanding Nina differently; I talked about her feelings about herself in the larger context of American race relations, and I think they responded to that.”

That understanding would crystallize over the next three years, as Garbus conducted interviews, did research and made the film. Working closely with Simone’s estate, Garbus had full access to all sectors of Simone’s life. Born in North Carolina, Simone was a classically trained pianist living in the Jim Crow South who ended up turning to jazz and blues to earn a living. Her advocacy on behalf of equality during the birth of the civil rights movement was not always well received, and her personal life included domestic abuse, financial difficulties and struggling with mental illness.

The film opens at the beginning of Simone’s appearance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival. Even as she is being applauded by adoring fans, the singer looks almost horrified before she settles into her music. 

“She had been absent for some time and she has this sort of stare-down moment of silence with the audience,” Garbus said. “You wonder what’s going on. When we return to that scene 70 minutes later in the film, hopefully the viewer has a sense of that moment, of what’s going on inside Nina.”

Garbus never met the singer, but there were some elements in Simone’s life to which Garbus could relate. Simone spent much of her career as a working parent with a young daughter, and the worlds of parenting and performing didn’t always mesh.

“Her parenting went up and down,” said Garbus, mother of an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son. “But you see her notes from the road and she’s constantly worried about Lisa and what she’s doing.” 

“I loved finding those things,” the director continued. “My touring schedule is not close to being as rigorous as an on-tour musician. I do a lot of traveling, but I also take down time and I’m able to be with my kids. It’s a struggle, it’s a balance, but I think my kids know that I love what I do and I’m able to take them on a lot of my experiences with me.”

The daughter of civil liberties attorney Martin Garbus, Liz Garbus said that issues revolving around politics and social justice were a regular part of dinner conversation. She made her first documentary during her senior year in high school, and her interest deepened while a student at Brown University, majoring in media studies and history. Once out of college, Garbus worked with documentarian Jonathan Stack, who would produce her first two films. In 1998, she co-founded Moxie Firecracker Films with fellow Brown alum Rory Kennedy. 

The company has produced more than 20 films for cable networks and educational purposes. Her next film, “Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper” premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and will appear on HBO in April.

“The films coming out of Moxie consistently cover a wide range of fascinating topics,” said Simon Kilmurry, executive director of the International Documentary Association. “They’ve done so much work from their early days with their stories on the AIDS crisis to the criminal justice system.”

Even after the 2016 Oscars are a memory, Garbus hopes the film will continue to bring new audiences to discover the High Priestess of Soul. 

“I think for me, and many people who loved Nina Simone, [it] felt like she was sort of a treasured secret, even though you knew she was someone who was shared with millions of other people around the world,” Garbus said. “Now there’s a whole new generation of younger people who have found her.”