Hallelujah. Buckley biopic to close BIFF on a bittersweet note
Jeff Buckley’s tragic death at 30 robbed the world of a brilliant singer-songwriter. A biopic of his extraordinary life is the closing film of this year’s BIFF, followed by a live concert of his music.
Fresh from her national tour celebrating the music of singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, Katie Noonan is gearing up to do it all again at the Brisbane International Film Festival.
BIFF, as it’s known, will bookend this year’s festival (November 27 -30) with two exciting new films. Opening night at Howard Smith Wharves features Agon, the directorial debut of Italian filmmaker Giulio Bertelli, the son of fashion giant Miuccia Prada. It’s a drama about three female athletes – a judoka, a fencer and a rifle shooter – as they prepare for a fictional global sports tournament called the Ludoj 2024 Games.
It’s an inspirational start but the question is: how do you close a film festival? The answer this time is with a bittersweet but perfect symphony of film and sound. We’re talking about the Queensland premiere of It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, a new documentary by Amy Berg celebrating the life and artistry of the late singer-songwriter, who died tragically by drowning in 1997. He was just 30.
So it’s a poignant story, to say the least. Tragic even. The film will be screened at the South Bank Piazza and here’s what makes that an extra special event – it will be followed by a live concert performance of Buckley’s iconic Grace album, with Queensland music legends Katie and Tyrone Noonan, Jack Carty, Asha Jefferies, Jaguar Jonze, Moreton, Mark Moroney, Sue Ray and Jude York.
As far as the concert is concerned it’s a case of – here’s one we prepared earlier. When I chat to Katie Noonan, she has just finished 24 dates of her Jeff Buckley’s Grace Tour, with the final leg of that national tour in Darwin on November 20.
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“We have played every state and territory,” Noonan says. “It’s been crazy but it’s something I really wanted to do. Jeff Buckley had an incredible body of work that has changed my life for the better and his album Grace, well, David Bowie called it the greatest album of all time.”
The BIFF concert line-up will be different to the tour line-up but essentially it will be the same program, the album Grace in its entirety as a wonderful footnote to the film. (That will include widely acclaimed tracks including his covers of Hallelujah and Lilac Wine, as well as his original songs Last Goodbye and Lover, You Should’ve Come Over, among others.)
“That album is so spectacular and has stood the test of time,” Noonan says. “It’s going to be fun at BIFF and it will be a full circle moment and the 26th time we have done that concert.”
Noonan and her brother Tyrone were on the cusp of forming their acclaimed band George when they both went to a Jeff Buckley gig in 1996, the year before the singer died.
“He played Festival Hall in Brisbane but it was sold out so my brother and I drove to Seagulls club on the Gold Coast to see him,” Noonan recalls. “We were in Tyrone’s Datsun Bluebird. It was literally the following month that we formed George.”
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The vision of these now-famous Queensland musicians and siblings hurtling down the highway on a mission to catch Jeff Buckley makes one smile. Katie Noonan described Buckley as “the biggest influence on my life as an artist”. “Nothing else comes close,” she says.
And when Noonan and newly minted BIFF festival director Sophie Mathisen got together to chat about the Buckley film, it seemed the perfect fit for Katie to put together a line-up of locals to perform Grace as a finale to the film.
“It makes the screening special and brings an added dimension,” Mathisen says. “We had talked about it and spoke of our mutual regard and my experience of seeing the film. We finally came to an agreement when I was enroute to Toronto and messaged Katie from the airport and I said, shall we do this?” So, they are doing it.
“Like Katie, we are passionate about the idea of creative collaborations,” Mathisen says. “It’s an incredibly sad story but the documentary itself is very beautiful. Amy Berg is quite phenomenal as a filmmaker and brings a fresh lens. It is really told through that lens of the women in his life who loved him and he loved. She brings a real freshness to the biopic genre.”
The film is produced by long-time fan Brad Pitt. Buckley’s father, the acclaimed musician Tim Buckley, died at 28 of a heroin overdose, but drugs were not involved in Jeff Buckley’s untimely demise at 30.
Never Over, Jeff Buckley premiered at Sundance Film Festival in the US earlier this year. Sophie Mathisen saw it at the Sydney Film Festival.
“People were crying,” she recalls. “It’s that intense. There’s the pleasure of the music but the pain of the loss. The thing Katie Noonan does is reclaim the music away from the narrative of his tragic death.”
So, after wiping way the tears, the closing night audience can sit back and enjoy the music.