Beyonce/YouTube
This past January marked ten years since Beyoncé made her film directorial debut with the HBO documentary, Life Is But A Dream ahead of her surprise self-titled album. One of her most personal projects in her oeuvre, the film found the pop star in a state of metamorphosis following the end of her professional split from her father and former manager Michael Knowles and the birth of first child, Blue Ivy Carter.
Not only did she revolutionize the “digital drop” and raise the bar for pop music videos within that year; she began to adopt a life of extreme privacy, transitioning from a visible A-list celebrity to a more mysterious, almost deity-like figure. Every soundbite, red-carpet appearance, and film project since has felt like some sort of miracle, a gift from God herself to her die-hard fans.
That’s why the announcement of a Beyoncé documentary always feels a bit earth-shattering. Still, the promise of getting some access into the singer’s highly secured life always reveals a much more urgent message: Beyoncé, whose talents are both a given and somehow always under-appreciated, is one of our best working filmmakers today. It’s certainly the primary takeaway of her latest marvel, Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, in AMC theaters, which manages to elevate a drifting standard for concert films and music documentaries in the era of streaming.