BBC Two has announced that it will screen a new "landmark film" about the last five years of music icon David Bowie's life in January, featuring previously unheard music.
David Bowie: The Last Five Years is director and producer Francis Whately's follow-up to his 2013 film David Bowie: Five Years and focuses on Bowie's final projects: the albums The Next Day and Blackstar and the musical Lazarus, which was co-written with Irish playwright Enda Walsh. Included is the original vocal Bowie recorded for the track Lazarus, which has never been heard before.
"He would stand in front of the mic and, for the four or five minutes he was singing, he would pour his heart out and I could see through the window that he was really feeling it," Bowie's producer Tony Visconti says in the film.
"The audio picked up his breathing. It wasn't that he was out of breath. He was like hyper-ventilating in a way, like getting his energy up to sing this. A man on top of his game. It's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And the saddest lyrics to hear them now."
Bowie passed away in New York on January 10 this year after a battle with cancer, two days after his 69th birthday. The new film, one of a number of BBC television and radio programmes celebrating his life and work, will mark what would have been his 70th birthday in January 2017.
Director Whately said that he had always hoped to make another film about Bowie, but "just didn't expect it to be this soon".
"However, looking at Bowie's extraordinary creativity during the last five years of his life has allowed me to re-examine his life's work and move beyond the simplistic view that his career was simply predicated on change - Bowie the chameleon… 'ch ch ch changes' etc," he continued.
"Instead, I would like to show how the changes were often superficial, but the core themes in his work were entirely consistent - Alienation, Mortality and Fame."
January will also see the second annual David Bowie Festival take place in Dublin. The festival, which runs from January 5 to 10, will include a vigil, karaoke Bowie and a Q&A with Lazarus playwright Walsh.
