Directed by Betsy Schechter, Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive gives the audience an intimate look at the life and career of disco icon Gloria Gaynor from her own perspective beyond disco.
Experiencing Gaynor’s life story in her voice makes this documentary compelling. Gaynor hails from Newark, New Jersey, and is part of a large loving family. She remembers, “Kids don’t know they are poor if they are loved.” Gaynor is moved to tears as she shares a story about her mother, who was an incredible singer and asked her to take the high parts of a song she could no longer sing due to vocal surgery.
Director Betsy Schechter jumps time from Gaynor’s quest to create a gospel album in 2015 to the dawning of her career. Gaynor’s star rose in the mid-1970s, reaching its height with the Grammy award-winning song “I Will Survive” written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris. For most of her career, like many young creatives, Gaynor sang songs she didn’t necessarily want to sing in order to make her label happy so she could make money.
Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive focuses on the childhood and marital trauma Gaynor experienced, including placing how her faith saved her front and center as the hero’s journey. I understand the inspiration to lead with the trauma experienced in Gaynor’s life, but Gaynor says early on in the documentary that she would prefer not to talk about the abuse she’s endured. Yet, her current manager, Stephanie Gold, encourages her client to openly share what she went through as a strategy to help her shift from being a pop artist to being accepted as a gospel artist. “She doesn’t like to speak about it. And I said, ‘If you’re gonna put out this unbelievable gospel project, you got to tell people your story and that will give people strength and endurance and courage to go on.’”
This aspect of the documentary sent up some red flags for me. As Gloria Gaynor openly shares her disdain for Linwood Simon, her ex-husband and former manager of over 20 years due to his treatment of their relationship and her career, I see hints of the same kind of control with her new manager. Just as I began to ruminate about that power dynamic, the narrative goes back to archival footage of the disco scene and fantastic performances by Gaynor in the 1970s that made me lose my skepticism and admire all this artist accomplished.
Gaynor’s co-star in this film is her faith. The main challenge is her calling to make a gospel album but having the music industry want to keep her pigeonholed in genres that no longer fulfilled her creative and spiritual needs. Gloria Gaynor is seventy-five years old as she makes this career shift, and she is still touring in Europe and throughout the United States because she is self-funding her album.
So we see this dynamic woman who has been onstage for over forty years performing for thousands of adoring fans in various countries, working in recording studios down South while dealing with a debilitating back injury she’s had since she tripped over an amp at a show in NYC when she was in her late 20s. Witnessing Gloria Gaynor’s drive and determination to reach her goals is mesmerizing.
As the documentary develops, Gold encourages Gaynor to rest, but the artist is determined to live her life on her terms. The duo seeks advice from an expert in gospel music to devise a strategy and plan that includes reaching out to current famous gospel artists to collaborate. As Gaynor works on her album, we see her going to the studio and writing new songs. Watching the creative process of songwriters write songs in real time is always fascinating; these parts of the documentary are fabulous. The music is stunning and leaves you tapping your foot throughout the documentary.
Gloria Gaynor takes pride in her relationship with her faith, and it is the driving force of this story. Her determination to cross genres and make this gospel album is impressive. It’s also interesting to see how her focus, strategy, and ability to self-fund with her manager’s full-time assistance allow Gaynor to progress towards her goals no matter what unexpected challenges life brings.
The documentary spends a fair amount of time on Gloria Gaynor’s fame in Europe as she has made a living after the disco era ended in the United States. There’s a heartwarming story about children and a community in Spain who use “I Will Survive” as their theme song as they rebuild their school. From there, the director uses archival footage of the various movements from the AIDS epidemic to women’s rights to Holocaust survivors who have taken on “I Will Survive” as their anthems.
It’s interesting that unlike the recent documentary Love to Love You, Donna Summer on HBO, which was co-directed by Summer’s daughter Brooklyn Sudano, Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive doesn’t spend much time speaking about how the song has had such positive impact for the LGBTQIA+ communities. Instead, the filmmakers reflect how the song universally inspires a diverse group of marginalized people.
Gloria Gaynor in this documentary inspires the audience to believe it’s never too late to do whatever it is you want to do in a lifetime if you are granted the gift of a long life. Western culture focuses so much on people who achieve greatness when they are thirty and under, ignoring, ridiculing, or blaming people determined to keep living after fifty. Even though the filmmakers choose to ignore the underlying racism of the “disco sucks” movement that ended Gaynor’s popularity in the United States and glossed over the impact of “I Will Survive” on the LGBTQIA+ community, Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive is a lovely documentary that reflects the brilliance of one of our most iconic recording artists.
Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival Friday June 9, 2023, at Spring Studios/The Indeed Theater with a live performance by Gloria Gaynor after the screening.
