The story of Lilith Fair, Sarah McLachlan‘s all-female touring music festival, will be told in a new documentary from the CBC and Ally Pankiw (I Used To Be Funny, Black Mirror‘s Joan is Awful, Feel Good, etc). It’s inspired by Vanity Fair‘s 2019 oral history of the festival, “Building a Mystery,” by Jessica Hopper with Sasha Geffen and Jenn Pelly, and features over 600 hours of previously unseen archival footage, along with interviews with artists (including McLachlan, Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, Natalie Merchant, Mýa, Jewel, Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, Brandi Carlile, and Olivia Rodrigo), organizers, and attendees.
“Lilith Fair exemplifies the ‘cool older sister’ of the music industry, who already knows the joys and nightmares of being a woman and tries to make the path a little bit easier for future generations,” Pankiw said in a statement. “I want to give a deeper understanding of the festival to the young female, nonbinary and queer musicians and music fans who picked up a guitar or tickets to a concert for the first time because Lilith showed them how.”
“What Sarah built with that festival changed so much for so many people,” Dan Levy, whose Not a Real Production Company is co-producing with Elevation Pictures, said. “And while it is now seen as an odds-defying success story, it was an uphill battle every step of the way. And there is a lot to be learned from that story. I’m thrilled to join Sarah on this adventure and am excited for everyone to understand just how revolutionary Lilith Fair really was.”
The documentary is set to come out during the CBC’s 2025-26 season; stay tuned.
Lilith Fair ran from 1997-1999, with a revival in 2010. Artists who played the first year include McLachlan, Suzanne Vega, Fiona Apple, Tracy Bonham, Meredith Brooks, The Cardigans, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tracy Chapman, Paula Cole, Shawn Colvin, Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, Jewel, Lisa Loeb, and more. 1998 included some of the same artists, along with Chantal Kreviazuk, Cowboy Junkies, Des’ree, Diana Krall, Erykah Badu, Liz Phair, Luscious Jackson, Meshell Ndegeocello, Missy Elliott, Natalie Merchant, Queen Latifah, Sinéad O’Connor, and more.
McLachlan has been on tour this year celebrating the 30th anniversary of her third album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and has Canadian dates coming up in November.