ZAPPA
USA, 2020, 127 min
Director: Alex Winter
Producers: Jade Allen, Devorah DeVries, John Frizzell, Alex Winter, Ahmet Zappa, Glen Zipper
Editor: Mike J. Nichols
Cinematographer: Anghel Decca
Billed as an intimate and expansive look into the innovative life of the iconic and iconoclastic musician and artist Frank Zappa, the film was made with unfettered access to the Zappa family trust and all archival footage. It explores the private life behind the musical career that never shied away from the political turbulence of its time. Zappa features appearances by the musician’s widow Gail Zappa and several of his musical collaborators. Zappa was fully crowdfunded through one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns, involving more than 8,000 backers who invested more than $1,200,000 in 30 days to help preserve and digitize Zappa’s private archives, including thousands of hours of unreleased material in the Zappa vault.
Alex Winter has had an eclectic career -- he started as a child actor, then turned to directing commercials and music videos, and later received acclaim for writing and directing Freaked (Entertainment Weekly called it one of the “Top Ten greatest comedies of the Nineties”)and Fever, a psychological thriller. His documentary work includes The Panama Papers (about the biggest global corruption scandal), and Deep Web (about the online black market Silk Road).