Anita Pallenberg was an actress, artist, model, and style icon who led an interesting life that brought her around the globe, spending time with luminaries like Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Federico Fellini, Luchini Visconti, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pallenberg became involved with Brian Jones in the mid-sixties and she became an integral part of the legendary rock group The Rolling Stones. She later married Keith Richards and had three kids with him, their relationship lasted several years. Her influence on the band has been well noted.
Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill directed Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, a documentary about Pallenberg’s life. Alexis is a prolific documentary producer and the co-director of Bright Lights Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Svetlana is also an established documentary producer including the well received two part documentary, Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon. Bloom and Zill recently spoke to Immersive about their new film via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length]
What was the inspiration for this? What was the spark that put this movie into motion?
Alexis Bloom: Marlon Richards. He had seen Bright Lights, a film that I did about Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. We knew a couple of lovely people in common, sort of close people, old friends, like the old true kind of people. He sent me an email about his mother, which was incredible and very articulate and unsentimental, but at the same time, very loving. He spoke about her in such a way that I felt immediately attracted to her even though I didn’t know who she was. That was the first hook. Then I went to go and meet him. I read the diary pages very soon afterward.
Svetlana, what was on those pages where you were just like, oh wow? I would love to explore this.
Svetlana Zill: When I first read the pages, I knew about Anita. I was aware of Anita. I grew up a huge Stones fan and sixties music and culture and film fan. Anita was on my radar, so when Alexis first mentioned the project to me, I was familiar with her. And when I learned that there were these memoir pages, these manuscript pages, I was immediately intrigued by that because she was sort of this mysterious figure to me.
I never really knew much about her perspective. That’s exactly what the pages offer and honestly, it was exhilarating the first time I read through the pages, her keen observation of people and the sort of intimacy with which she lets you into her world and paints this picture of her life just immediately drew me in.
There’s been a lot written about and movies made about the Rolling Stones. What I thought was fascinating about her and this documentary is… I knew her name, I knew the face. I know that she had been in Barbarella and stuff like that. It was interesting to see how unique she was.
SZ: I feel like we came at it most interested in her, and then there were these fascinating side characters of the band, but she was the one, and the strength of her voice and her perspective and just how biting and dynamic and wild she was. She’s the star. I think initially Alexis touched on Marlon’s relationship with her and how he felt about his mother and how he grew up with arguably one of the most famous fathers in the world, but he was like, my mom’s the really interesting people should know about my mom, which I think was a huge motivator for him to make this film.
AB: The band is super interesting. They’ve made amazing music. Their musical prowess is undeniable and long-lasting. I think if you were in a room with people, and everyone said this, if in a room with Keith and Mick and Anita and Brian and everything, people noticed Anita first. She was a very unusual woman for that time, very independent, spoke five languages, traveled, didn’t look to the man to talk for her, didn’t really give two fucks about anything.
What was it like to meet and interview Volker Schlöndorff?
SZ: He’s incredible. He’s based in Berlin. He was still making films when we spoke to him. He is in his mid-eighties, and he is incredibly sharp. He adored Anita and he had all sorts of feelings about her, but he remembered, I mean, his recall is just incredible, especially because they had not been in touch in decades. I mean, it had been over 40 years, but he remembered first meeting and working with her and of course, becoming close friends with her.
But yeah, he was incredibly honest, which is something we’ve both said before that Anita really demands a level of honesty, I think, from the people who were close to her. He was very forthcoming in thinking she had this incredible raw talent. And I think perhaps as a director, he got frustrated by the fact that she wasn’t as eager to pursue a career in the more Hollywood sense.
What was the process like to assemble all of this, interviews, photos, footage, etc?
SZ: The Super Eight footage that Marlon gave us was incredible. A lot of it was going through and finding these moments that were either, there was a visible shot, that was in focus, that was a lot of it was slowing down that material and stabilizing it and trying to make it watchable honestly. And then of course, we gathered in terms of the archival material, we gathered everything we could find of Anita and the Stones during that period of them together. We had two incredible editors that we worked with.
So were you involved in finding some of those discoveries?
SZ: We had a great archival team. We had a wonderful associate producer, who did a huge amount of research and an archival producer. I have a background in archival research. Those were my first jobs coming up in film, and it’s something I’m very passionate about as well. I definitely can lose many hours going down a rabbit hole of searching for that kind of material.
AB: Yeah, there wasn’t a frame we didn’t see, but we chose everything. Give us stuff. I mean stills from the family album that have never been seen. Marlon and Lucy are in bed together, Keith asleep. You don’t see those in other Rolling Stones, biographies, really people eating round the table, that sort of stuff.
SZ: Marlon was incredible and trusting in us. I spent many days just scanning these photos, these family albums, and there was nothing where he was like, oh, don’t go there, don’t go there. He was just like, here’s everything. Go through it. There was a real trust there, which we’re grateful for.
What has the reaction to this been like? Tell me a little bit about your feelings now that this is out there in the world…
AB: It premiered at Cannes. We were huge in England. The British loved it. We got four stars from the Financial Times, and The Guardian.
SZ: It opened in 26 cinemas in the UK, which is amazing for a documentary now. We’ve had quite a nice festival run leading up to the release of the film and theaters and on video on demand. One nice thing about that is that the people who knew Anita, friends, and family would come out during some of these screenings.
We met people in Zurich. We met people at the Rome Film Festival. It’s like this whole crew of Pallenburg cousins came to the Rome Film Festival to see the film, which was incredible. That was a very cool experience, I have to say, of just meeting more friends and family through the process of showing the film around.
Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg is available on dvd and digital here.
