Brooklyn Sudano: Last News

Thania Garcia Giorgio Moroder and Iconoclast have struck a deal to work on the development and marketing of the “Father of Disco’s” name, image, and likeness rights. Iconoclast acquires the Grammy and Oscar-winning composer’s producer royalties, which span across timeless hits including Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and Blondie’s “Call Me,” among others.

Kelly Rowland should be first in line to portray the Queen of Disco. Every so often, social media implodes as users clamor to point out how similar the two singers look. And Rowland isn't shy to bolster the calls for her to nab a starring role in a potential biopic; in 2019, the Destiny's Child alum dressed as the First Lady of Love for Halloween and sent fans into a frenzy. Donning a feathered white coat over a white bodysuit tied at the waist, Rowland shared several photos of her costume paired with photos of Summer in the original outfit.

, an HBO Original documentary offering an intimate glimpse at the artist's life on and off stage.Brooklyn Sudano, one of Summer's three children, teamed up with Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams to direct the documentary exploring the highs and lows of her mother's fame, giving fans a deeply personal portrait of the Queen of Disco before her death on May 17, 2012.«I had just become a mother. I didn't have my mom.

Love to Love You, Donna Summer is not just a documentary, it’s a hymn to the life and times of the indisputable queen of disco. The film conveys Donna Summer’s journey from the gospel churches of Boston to the dance floors that defined an era. Directed by first-time helmer and Summer’s daughter Brooklyn Sudano and Roger Ross Williams (The Apollo, Traveling While Black), Love to Love You weaves together interviews, footage and the singer’s infectious music to deliver a new perspective on the life of a vocal powerhouse. As part of the Deadline FYC House + HBO Max Event series, we spoke with Sudano, Williams and producer David Blackman on the red carpet at the New York premiere. 

recent episode of the “Allison Interviews” podcast, Brooklyn Sudano recalled details of her mother’s battle with lung cancer, which took the singer’s life in 2012.“My mother was extremely strong as a person. I think her decision not to share [her diagnosis] with the world was that she was a woman of faith, and she really believed that God was going to heal her,” the “My Wife and Kids” star, 42, told host Allison Kugel.Summer, who Sudano described as “one of the strongest people” she knew, maintained positivity and surrounded herself with people who shared the same energy.“When you’re in the public eye, you end up carrying a lot of people’s emotions for them,” Sudano continued of her “trooper” mom.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Donna Summer is to this day considered the Queen of Disco thanks to her chart-topping hits throughout the 1970s, famous for her commanding stage presence, dramatic makeup and voluptuous curls.

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“Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” premiering Saturday on HBO. “It’s not pain I could have spoken about, but it’s something that I have to always incorporate into my reality.”The childhood trauma left her “feeling guilty” — even as she was feeling love from fans around the world at the peak of her musical powers.

Donna Summer fans might wish for a more comprehensive documentary bio than HBO’s Love to Love You, Donna Summer (★★★★★), but it’s hard to imagine a more intimate portrait of the woman, artist, mother, and hit-making Queen of Disco than this fascinating music-filled odyssey.Co-directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams and actress-director Brooklyn Sudano, the middle of Summer’s three daughters, Love to Love You is framed as the family’s attempt to, as Brooklyn puts it, “figure out the many pieces of who Mom really was.”Summer, who succumbed to lung cancer in May 2012, provides the filmmakers key pieces to the puzzle by way of her songs and performances, recorded interviews, and footage she shot herself with her treasured Sony movie camera.At the height of her ’70s fame as pop’s First Lady of Love, Summer bought the camera because she loved making movies — and to entertain herself and the crew while on tour, according to her sister Mary Ellen, who sang backup. The video skits and home movies reveal the singer to be an unapologetic goofball, far from the gyrating diva of so-called Sex Rock that her label Casablanca Records was selling.Sex siren was merely a role she played, Summer explains in an interview voiceover.

the music charts and had 14 top-ten singles, including «Hot Stuff,» «Bad Girls» and «She Works Hard for the Money,» making her one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of her era. Now fans can see Summer as never before with the release of the HBO Original . Directed by Oscar and Emmy-winner Roger Ross William and the daughter of Summer, Brooklyn Sudano, this documentary combines intimate footage and interviews from those closest to her.In this personal portrait, viewers will get to see into the life of Summer, on and off the stage.While many are familiar with her on-stage persona — a dazzling presence that could entertain the biggest crowds — few know what she was really like under it all.

Queen of Disco in the ’70s, the suicidal singer hit rock bottom.“The most dismal days of my existence were at the height of my career,” says the late legend in the new documentary “Love To Love You, Donna Summer,” which premieres on HBO and HBO Max May 20. In fact, while Summer was riding high from the success of her breakout hit, the orgasmic classic “Love To Love You Baby,” she was enduring an abusive relationship with artist Peter Mühldorfer. One severe beating even left her unconscious, with a black eye and broken ribs.“I hit her, and I never could forgive myself,” says Mühldorfer in the doc.And having grown up in a deeply religious household — her father smacked her for wearing red nail polish because “that’s what whores wore” — Summer was highly conflicted about her image as a sex goddess from hits such as “Love To Love You Baby,” “I Feel Love” and later “Hot Stuff.” In reality, she was more church girl than “Bad Girl.”“You’re looking at me, but what you see is not what I am,” she says in the film, which is co-directed by her daughter Brooklyn Sudano and Oscar winner Roger Ross Williams.

Oscar winner and Academy member Roger Ross Williams is saying publicly what many in the documentary community have stewed over privately – that the sums of money being spent on Oscar documentary campaigns has “gotten insane.” And Williams, a former Academy Governor representing the Doc Branch, says something may be done about it.

Addie Morfoot Contributor During a talk at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX on Wednesday, Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams spoke about a wide variety of topics, including his latest documentary, “Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” how insanely expensive it is to garner a doc Oscar nomination, and why the racial reckoning that occurred in the nonfiction community after George Floyd’s murder is over. Despite celebrity-driven docs being all the rage, Williams admitted that he usually rejects them. “I have so many celebrities who come to me about making a documentary (about their life),” the helmer told moderator Thom Powers. “It’s never worked out because if they are a living celebrity, who is very popular, they are all about control. It’s a piece of propaganda about their image and their career. It’s not a documentary.”

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Sometimes, when a documentary has a great subject, it can explore that subject with an intimacy that’s arresting, only to treat other aspects of the story with a kind of cavalier casualness. “Love to Love You Donna Summer” is that kind of documentary. Co-directed by Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano (who is Summer’s daughter), it’s full of home movies and photographs and archival footage of Donna Summer, and it creates an eye-opening portrait of the ambitious yet deeply disconsolate woman she was. We see her when she was growing up in Boston, where she sang gospel in church and felt a gift passing through her, knowing that she was going to be famous, or when she moved to Munich in 1968, at 19, to be in the German production of “Hair” (there’s a startling clip of her onstage, in long dark pigtails, singing “Aquarius” in German), or later on, after she’d become a pop star, at home with her daughters, lost in the empty mirror of fame.

Ellise Shafer HBO Max will host its own coffeehouse at SXSW this year, featuring events centered around the streamer’s popular titles like “The Last of Us” and “The White Lotus.” The two-day activation is presented by HBO Max’s Human by Orientation and Pa’lante initiatives, which are designed to “elevate and celebrate the LGBTQIA+ and Latinx communities,” according to a press release. The coffeehouse will be open to the public on March 11 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and on March 12 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The coffeehouse will host both invite-only and public events, including a HBO documentary filmmaker roundtable, “The Last of Us” fireside chat with Gabriel Luna and Variety‘s Selome Hailu, an acoustic performance by Ambar Lucid, a queer cocktail party and “The White Lotus” discussion with writer Evan Ross Katz and Variety‘s Adam B. Vary.

Donna Summer could hit notes more thrillingly beautiful than any other pop singer of her time, or since. I’m not sure even Whitney Houston, as great as she was, quite reached the glistening heights that culminate “Last Dance” (though she comes very close in “I Will Always Love You”). Mariah Carey (no relation to me) performs impressive vocal acrobatics, yet to my ear she can’t match the bell-like shimmer of Donna in the higher registers. And Donna in the lower registers – well, the voice thrums with visceral resonance.

The documentary Love to Love You, Donna Summer, about one of the world’s greatest pop stars, constitutes a kind of duet – between two filmmakers. The film, making its world premiere in Berlin, comes from directors Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano, daughter of the subject of the film, the legendary Donna Summer. 

Berlinale Adds Disney Tribute Film, Donna Summer Docs To Line-UpThe Berlinale has added Love to Love You, Donna Summer and 100 Years of Disney Animation – A Shorts Celebration to its 73rd edition line-up running February 16-26. Both titles will screen in the Berlinale Special sidebar. Co-directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano’s the Donna Summer film tells the story of the disco star through unpublished film extracts, home video, photographs, artwork, writings, personal audio and other recording. Academy Award winner and Walt Disney Animation Studios President Clark Spencer fronts the Disney film, sharing his favorite shorts from the studios’ 100 years of filmmaking. In other news, the festival has announced it will pay tribute to French cinematographer Caroline Champetier with its Berlinale Camera 2023 award. She has chosen Anne Fontaine’s The Innocents, on which she did the cinematography, for a screening as part of Berlinale Special program.

A shakeup no one saw coming. After Cruel Summer‘s critically acclaimed premiere on Freeform in 2021, the series will be saying goodbye to its cast and showrunner — and there will be a completely different story explored in season 2.