Image Source: Pakkikhabar, Breaking Daily News
According to reports, Kanye ‘Ye’ West wants to approve the final edits of his upcoming Netflix documentary titled, ‘Jeen-Yuhs’ and has demanded Netflix to allow him.
Ye wrote on his social media, "I’m going to say this kindly for the last time. I must get the final edit and approval on this doc before it releases on Netflix. Open the edit room immediately so I can be in charge of my own image. Thank you in advance.” Jeen-Yuhs is directed by Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah and is divided into three parts which feature the footage that was filmed across Ye’s 20-years of career in music, fashion, and politics. The footage expected to be included in his documentary is his intimate conversations with his mother Donda, candid moments of his struggle to pivot from producing his music, Ye’s run-ins with Taylor Swift, Donald Trump. The footage would most probably include glimpses of Kim Kardashian as well since she has been one of the essential parts of his life. The documentary is going to premiere on 16th February 2022 and before the audience could watch it on Netflix, Jeen-Yuhs is going to premiere at the Sundance film festival.
Netflix's official statement about the documentary reads, "Filmed over two decades, jeen-yuhs is an intimate and revealing portrait of Kanye's experience, showcasing both his formative days trying to break through and his life today as a global brand and artist."
In a candid interview with Variety, Coodie mentioned, “I kept hearing about Kanye and kept running into him, but I finally saw him perform and I was like, ‘This dude is a superstar!’ Watching the movie ‘Hoop Dreams’ is really what gave me the idea for this film. I wanted to do a ‘Hoop Dreams’ on Kanye and see how far he’d go.” Coodie Simmons further shared, “Mind you, when his team and the businesspeople have gotten involved, they’re of course going to have their say. But I needed to tell this story. It’s not about making Kanye likable or not. The footage doesn’t lie. What makes the film special is that it’s not something definitive; it’s his journey through my vision.” He also shared that he asked Ye to trust me and he did 100%.
The directors shared that they felt that the movie could be cut and released but there was so much happening with Ye that his story kept evolving. Coodie added, “I was always arguing with people that this dude is about to win Grammys. That was the main goal of the doc was to see if he achieved that. But we always say, you can’t let your imagination get in the way of God’s manifestation. I’ve seen the Grammys, but God had something way more in mind for Kanye — he had running for president in mind for Kanye.”
Chike Ozah directed Ye’s breakout single, ‘Through the Wire’ and since then Ozah and Simmons have been business partners. Chike shared, “I was familiar with Kanye on the producer tip, and I respected him. So Coodie and I did it, and have been business partners ever since.” Talking about what makes Ye’s story interesting Chike added, “What I think resonates about Kanye, whether people have had the same amount of success or not, is maybe they got crippled by adversity. Kanye didn’t let that cripple him. He didn’t cower to it — he met it head on. He leveraged every loss to light his fire. That’s the mindset when you’re operating in your gift — you have to believe the doors will open for you and continue to put in the work. Kanye never stopped, and neither did we.”
Coodie Simmons also spoke to Indiewire and shared, “We have to be true to the story. We can’t sugarcoat anything. Everybody is going to have their own opinion.” In their interview with Variety, Coodie Simmons mentioned that when Ye and Kim got married, he was not invited and Jeen-Yuhs is a film truly about Kanye West’s life and not Kim Kardashian. On asking if the documentary would be called a music documentary or bio documentary, Chike Ozah said, “I definitely would not describe it as a music doc. It’s really a faith-based journey broken up into three acts: vision, purpose and awakening. We called it “Jeen-Yuhs” not because we are saying that Coodie’s a genius or Kanye’s a genius specifically. We are just championing the concept that everybody has a genius inside of them. We say it’s faith-based because we truly believe that God has planted that genius within us.” While Simmons added, “We don’t even want to call it a documentary to tell you the truth. We want to call it a film. I’m narrating the whole film, so there’s no interviews. It’s all cinéma vérité footage. It’s almost like God wrote this story.”
