(SOUTH ORANGE, NJ) -- In honor of Black History Month, South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC) and the town of South Orange has planned a mix of events for this month-long celebration including an open-air art exhibit, podcasts, outdoor historical run/walks, children's activities and virtual panel discussions. Among the offerings include a pair of films available for streaming about two legendary singers: Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.
Ella Fitzgerald: Just One Of Those Things - Available On Demand Through February 28. Ella Fitzgerald was a 15 year-old street kid when she won a talent contest in 1934 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Within months she was a star. This documentary 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 to bring Ella Fitzgerald to life and to tell the story of her music and of 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 also uncovers Ella’s commitment to the battle for Civil Rights; and it 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.”
This documentary will “stir your soul.” -The Boston Globe. Click here to rent the film for $12. After “unlocking” a purchase, you’ll have 14 days to start watching. Once you begin, you’ll have 72 hours to finish watching.
BILLIE - Available On Demand Through February 28. Crafted from extraordinary unheard interviews, and restored key performances into color for the first time, BILLIE is the story of the singer who changed the face of American music, and the journalist who died trying to tell it.
BILLIE draws upon newly unearthed interviews conducted in the 1970s by late journalist and to-be Billie Holiday biographer Linda Lipnack Kuehl with Jazz luminaries—including Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Charles Mingus and Sylvia Syms—with Holiday’s friends and lovers, even with the FBI agents who kept her under surveillance. Raw and unflinching, BILLIE captures an untold story of exploitation, racism, addiction and politics.
“A transfixing documentary about the master Jazz singer.” –Variety. Click here to rent the film for $12. After “unlocking” a purchase, you’ll have 14 days to start watching. Once you begin, you’ll have 72 hours to finish watching.
SOPAC is proud to be part of the South Orange-Maplewood community and to be supported by the arts-centric Township of South Orange Village as well as the nonprofit management entity of the village’s Special Improvement District, the South Orange Village Center Alliance (SOVCA).
SOPAC is an accessible cultural destination located in the heart of downtown South Orange that presents world-class artists in an intimate and welcoming environment.
The mission of SOPAC is to enrich individual lives, and to engage and serve the community in South Orange and beyond, through arts experiences that inspire and transform.
The Jennifer & Tony Leitner Performance Hall is a 439-seat mainstage theatre with superb acoustics, sight lines and seating. Audiences remark that attending a performance in this space is like hearing their favorite artists right in their own living room. Artists acknowledge that the atmosphere encourages conversations with audiences. Above the mainstage theatre is a 2,170 square-foot urban-style Loft, which is used for performances, rehearsals, classes and special events. The unique architecture of our building, which includes a stunning 3-story glass-enclosed atrium, houses The Herb + Milly Iris Gallery.
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