Major film company to distribute Dixie Chicks documentary worldwide

The Dixie Chicks will be featured in a documentary set for worldwide release. Photo courtesy of Columbia Records

The Weinstein Company has acquired the worldwide rights to “Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing,” a documentary following the lives and careers of the Dixie Chicks after Natalie Maines’ Bush remarks.
The film, from two-time Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple (“Harlan County USA,” “American Dream”) and director Cecilia Peck, will be featured as a Gala Presentation at the 31st Toronto Film Festival.
Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of TWC, made the announcement last week. “Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing” is the first documentary in 14 years to be featured as a Gala Presentation at the Toronto Film Festival.
“I am extremely proud to be associated with this film because it’s not only an outstanding and creative piece of work but it also exposes our responsibility as Americans to confront our fundamental right to freedom of speech,” Harvey Weinstein said in a statement.
“Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing” travels with the Dixie Chicks, from the peak of their popularity as the national-anthem-singing darlings of country music and top-selling female recording artists of all time, through the now infamous anti-Bush comment made by the group’s lead singer Natalie Maines in 2003. The film ultimately presents who the Dixie Chicks are as women, public figures and musicians.
“At a time when Americans are divided between red and blue, rich and poor, immigrant and citizen, the Dixie Chicks and their music cross over many lines,” Kopple said in a statement. “They are contemporary but rooted in tradition, strong yet vulnerable – career women who are deeply connected to family. This film tells the story of these all-American women who refused to back down and in the process became even stronger.”
“The Dixie Chicks paid a huge price for questioning the invasion of Iraq and daring to say what millions of people were thinking,” Peck said in a statement. “Our film looks at the cost of standing up for what you believe in, and the unbreakable bond between three brave women.”