(ANSA) - ROME, FEBRUARY 07 - An icon of the blues with a victimization, which began with a traumatic childhood due to a mother who forced her into prostitution at the age of 11.
Victim of alcohol and drug abuse.
Strong, generous woman free, even in her sexuality.
Paladin ante litteram of civil rights and target of the American government and the Hoover FBI: a persecution that also contributed to the singer's death in 1959, when she was only 44 years old.
A whirlwind of contradictions, art, tragedy and courage, which takes shape in The United States vs Billie Holiday by Lee Daniels, with an extraordinary Andra Day (classy singer-songwriter, here at her debut as a protagonist) in the role of the great African American artist.
The film, which arrives in the United States on Hulu on February 26, has just won two Golden Globe nominations: as the best actress in a drama film for Andra Day (also among the favorites for an Oscar nomination) who is back in the race also in the five best song, Tigress and Tweed, interpreted and written by her with Raphael Saadiq.
When we think of the civil rights movement, "names like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Gandhi, Rosa Parks come to mind. In my opinion Billie Holiday gave impetus to that movement - explains Lee Daniels in the online meeting with AndraDay organized by the American Cinemateque - with his canzone'Strange fruit '(one of his songs symbol, in which parladel lynching of a black man, the' strange fruit 'appesoall'albero) and it is a fact that can not be found in history books.
Then I too have fought against my addictions and as an artist, understanding Billie's path, I felt I had to do her justice. "
Andra Day knew that the government "had chased Billie Holiday, but not how far it had gone - stresses the singer-songwriter, who has lost 17kg of weight for the role and reinterpreted all the songs -. The only way they had to carrying on that system of oppression and crushing the truth, the one that Billie sang. "
(HANDLE).