Josephine Portrait

Biography of the African-American who became a major performer in the Paris cabarets of the 1920s and 1930s. The film follows her life beginning as a struggling performer in 1917 St. Louis, her frustrations leading to her move to France, …

Josephine Foster album Graphic as a Star is based upon the poems of the 19th century American poet Emily Dickenson. Josephine lays stairsteppy melodies beneath a collection of Dickenson gems and sings them with a burnished soulfullness like the purple sunsets so often described in the poems. Massachusetts mountains pearled spiderwebs and folk heroe William Tell are all present in this unforgetable meeting of Dickensons posey and Fosters music making a natural and inevitable whole. Ms. Foster is a Colorado-born artist whose songwriting draws from far corners of the musical spectrum to form a truly singular body of work. While sometimes compared to such singers as Shirley Collins or Tiny Tim, it is difficult to pigeonhole her arresting vocal style. She says her craft is strongly shaped by "Tin Pan Alley on my maternal side, rock and roll on my paternal side, Western folk music by birth, art-song and classical music via my adolescent passions".