https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=princepurplepassionandpomp

A bespoke compilation of Prince on the small screen.

Prince was a bonafide musical superstar whose passionate, soaring songs left an indelible mark. His flamboyant visual style made him an equally huge pop video star, but it was on stage that he really came alive, delivering a sexy, swaggering extravaganza on an epic scale. This bespoke compilation features documentary, interviews and lots of live performance to remember the Purple Prince of Pop.

It would be interesting to know what they have cleared to screen. I know about 10 years ago the ICA were unable to screen a bunch of things they wanted to.

Does anyone know who was involved in compiling this? from the description on the BFI website it could be anything from a carefully curated compilation (which might have unseen stuff on it) to a fan made DVD burn of bits and pieces from youtube.

andrewm7new said:

Does anyone know who was involved in compiling this? from the description on the BFI website it could be anything from a carefully curated compilation (which might have unseen stuff on it) to a fan made DVD burn of bits and pieces from youtube.

There's a live Q&A with cast and creatives from It's A Sin at the BFI that starts half an hour later. I'm hoping it's the latter, that I've seen all of it, and I can step out after half an hour and go to the It's A Sin panel, safe in the knowledge that I'm not missing anything.

ReddishBrownOne said:

I was there. For the most part, it was live clips of Prince interspersed between long excerpts from two different BBC documentaries - one from a few years ago (narrated by Trevor Nelson) and the one from the early nineties which had access to Paisley Park. The live clips were all things that had been shown on British TV before. A few appearances from the late nineties (on TFI Friday and some other show presented by Donna Air & Chris Moyles) were featured, as were a couple of songs from the Lovesexy live broadcast in 1988 (Let's Go Crazy, When Doves Cry', Purple Rain). There was also the interview he did with Mel 'Scary Spice' Brown. Oh yeah, and at the start they showed the video to 'Come On' (where Prince pretends to be an elderly busker on Hyde Park Corner) and that clip of young Prince on the Minneapolis news that was unearthed recently. No great revelations were made in those 90 minutes. But it was fun.

Would have been nice to see that stuff on the big screen (the Donna Air/Chris Moyles one was a special edition on The Tube called The Apocalypse Tube), but happy I didn't miss anything I hadn't seen before.

I know it's a festival, but I wish the BFI wouldn't have put two cool things on at the same time! (The live nature of the It's A Sin panel won for me).