Let The Canary Sing (Cyndi Lauper)

Award-winning director Alison Ellwood explores the personal and public life of Cyndi Lauper in this probing and hugely entertaining documentary portrait.

‘If you don't know where you came from, you don't know where you're going’, muses multiple Grammy, Emmy, Tony, Billboard and American Music Award winner Lauper.

Fluidly combining archival footage, home movies, still photographs and interviews, Ellwood's film traces the New Yorker’s career, from humble beginnings in a cold-water walk-up in Queens to worldwide fame.

It captures her boundless enthusiasm on stage, but also homes in on her personal relationships and life-long work in feminist and LGBTQI+ spheres.

The latter culminated in a 2015 speech to Congress in support of extending protections for queer homeless youth.

There’s also footage from a march where she revels in the repurposing of her 1983 hit into the protest slogan: ‘Girls Just Want to have FunDamental Human Rights’.