BRIGHT LIGHTS: STARRING CARRIE FISHER AND DEBBIE REYNOLDS

One to watch for.

Due from HBO in 2017, the 95 minute documentary BRIGHT LIGHTS, STARRING CARRIE FISHER AND DEBBIE REYNOLDS had its first screening at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016.

Shot between April 2014 and November 2015, this is a very personal story of a mother daughter relationship. Carrie Fisher enlisted her friend Fisher Stevens ( actor and documentary maker) to chronicle the final performance of Debbie’s nightclub act.

Debbie and Carrie live next door to each other. Debbie becomes increasingly frail during the filming. She was 83 at the time. One review said it is “very funny and brutally honest.”

Hollywoodreporter.com has an interview with Carrie and director Fisher Stevens, with some clips of the film.

Fisher Stevens, Carrie Fisher.

The documentary includes Debbie’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2015 – Carrie introduced her mother. The award ceremony can be seen on You Tube.

Carrie Fisher has taken on an advice column for the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The column is called “Advice from the Dark Side.”!

Also screened at the Cannes Film Festival was THE WOMEN WHO RUN HOLLYWOOD . Another one to look out for.

The two French women who made the documentary ( sisters Clara and Julia Kuperberg) said in an interview:

“We want to remember those women and give them back their rightful place in the American film history.They invented cinema as we know it. They were more powerful than any men at that time, higher paid, doing all the jobs, creating the first studio.

Names like LOIS WEBER, FRANCES MARION,DOROTHY ARZNER,MARY PICKFORD, LILIAN GISH.”

But how much history can you cover in 52 minutes, which is the length of this documentary.