TINA

Anna Mae Bullock was born in Tennessee and took a microphone on stage at sixteen. Ike Turner put her in his band and changed her name. Then they married. She was beaten for years. She ran in the seventies with almost no money and took on the debts. Nobody wanted to record her. She started again in her forties and by the eighties was one of the biggest selling artists in the world. The documentary looks at the present: Tina Turner lives in Switzerland, is close to eighty, and is tired of being asked about that period. Dan Lindsay directs with T.J. Martin. Tina Turner herself, journalists and people around her speak in it. It is an American production. The documentary works with a wide archive; concert recordings, television programmes and audio tapes are used. The matter it treats is who owns a story; Turner described the violence once and that account then became the definition of her life. The documentary shows the second start in detail; it was not easy for an older woman to find a place in the industry. The narrative holds the stage performances long. The film carries the character of a farewell in Turner's own words; she says so plainly in it. Turner died a short time afterwards. Its limit is method; the structure is conventional, the narrative chronological, and there is little that is new. Who it is for: viewers who like music documentary and portrait work. Who it is not for: the structure is conventional, the story known, and the ending sad.