Strange Fruit

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit," begins the protest song made famous by Billie Holiday and recorded by artists as various as Ella Fitzgerald, Pete Seeger, Tori Amos, Little Jimmy Scott, Diana Ross, Lou Rawls and Cassandra Wilson, whose bluesy version closes the film. Joel Katz's documentary doesn't have much panache, but with material this rich it doesn't need it. First sung by Holiday at Café Society, the first integrated nightclub outside Harlem, the song fused dark lyricism and social outrage into a seductive jazz ballad that became her signature. "I thought a black person had written it," says poet Amini Baraka (controversial writer Amiri Baraka's wife)...