Joy, It's Nina
Synopsis
The stories are based on news reports and Joy's own life, including voicemails left on her answer-machine by the legendary singer Nina Simone, her self proclaimed ‘Spiritual Mother’.
Details
- Year
- 2012
- Type of film
- Shorts
- Running time
- 34 mins 20 secs
- Format
- HDV
- Director
-
Jane Thorburn
- Producer
- Jane Thorburn
- Editor
- Jane Thorburn
- Screenwriter
- Joy Elias-Rilwan
- Director of Photography
- Jane Thorburn
- Sound
- Jane Thorburn, Aidan McCarthy
- Music
- Janes Lascelles
- Principal cast
- Joy Elias-Rilwan
Production Status
Production Company
Sales Company
Page updates
This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.
See also
You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

Director: Jane Thorburn
Year: 2023
A Magic Realist Documentary.<br /> The film weaves together real and mythical events to create connections between the history of the Crystal Palace in London and the sculpture called Psyche Abandoned. The story reveals how a moment in the life of a young woman called Psyche was captured in marble and travelled through time and space to sit in the same park overlooking South London for the last 170 years, while world wars, fires, explosions, royalty, music events, funfairs and circuses have rushed past her in endless succession. <br /> This ‘moment’ is the only constant in a story of splendour and spectacle, and like all the best stories, if only half of it is true it is still an incredible tale.

Director: Jane Thorburn
Year: 2019
The writer Deborah Levy imagines a lost lecture written by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It investigates an hysterical woman dancing through time, snow leopards lapping milk in the kitchen of Freud’s last house, and a journey under the ground on a ghost train.

Director: Hannah Berryman
Year: 2024
A landmark feature documentary about astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the Space Shuttle.<br /> Eileen’s incredible journey starts with her smalltown beginnings, sees her smash through many glass ceilings, and culminates in four dramatic space shuttle missions, the last being possibly the most dangerous and most important of them all.<br /> At its heart the film is the moving human drama of one family, where a mother’s extraordinary career takes us straight to the big philosophical question of what is the level of acceptable risk in human endeavour? <br /> This film celebrates Commander Collins’ trailblazing NASA career which opened the way for women to become spacecraft pilots and commanders, and proved a perfect riposte to a previous generation of male astronauts who thought there was no place for women to lead the way in space. <br /> Official Selection DOC NYC 2024 - World premiere<br /> Official Selection CPH:DOX 2025 - European premiere