SCREENINGS: Female Music Icons
- Nothing Compares
- Cesária Évora
- Tina
“Nothing Compares” to the banshee wail of a young Sinéad O’Connor and her genderless shaved head that took the world by storm at the beginning of the 90s. One of Ireland’s brightest rising stars by the age of 20, O’Connor refused to be molded into your typical pop princess, preferring to use her platform to speak out on controversial issues, like child abuse within the Catholic church. This new documentary charts her phenomenal rise to stardom and ultimate fall from grace, turning her into the music industry’s most famous exile, within the space of a few years. Booed off the stage at Madison Square Garden and publicly humiliated by the likes of Joe Pesci and even Madonna for her iconic Saturday Night Live performance, where she ripped a picture Pope John Paul II, O’Connor was vilified at every turn. Focusing on prophetic words and deeds across a five-year period (1987-1992), with a single contemporary interview by O’Connor herself, the film reflects on the legacy of this fearless trailblazer, through a contemporary feminist lens.