David Bowie: The First Five Years (2019)

Original title

David Bowie: Finding Fame

Directed by

Francis Whately

Genre

documentary film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 30m

Rating

6.9 of 10 from 32 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary follows David Bowie from 1965 to 1973, covering the time he changed his stage name and later ended his Ziggy Stardust character. It uses archive footage and interviews to show his early career and rise to fame.

informativearchivalearnestnostalgicchronologicalintrospectiveobservationalbiographical

What happens

David Bowie: Finding Fame, also known as David Bowie: The First Five Years, is a 2019 British documentary written and directed by Francis Whately. The film explores a period of David Bowie's career starting in 1965, around the time he dropped his stage name of Davie Jones in favor of Bowie, to 1973, when he dropped the Ziggy Stardust persona. It premiered in the United Kingdom on 9 February 2019 on BBC Two, and made its debut in the United States on 9 August 2019 on Showtime. The film is the third and final installment by Whately in his series about the iconic singer, with the first two in the trilogy being David Bowie: Five Years in 2013, and David Bowie: The Last Five Years in 2017. Bowie is a five-time Grammy winner; was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and his 1972 single "Changes" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. His career took off with the 1969 hit song "Space Oddity, which peaked at number five on the UK Albums Chart, and it was also used as background music by British television stations during the 1969 moon landing. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• David Bowie & the Story of Ziggy Stardust (2012)
• David Bowie: The Last Five Years (2017)
• Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1983)
• Bowie: The Final Act (2025)
• Moonage Daydream (2022)
• Stardust (2020)
• Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World (2016)
• Cracked Actor (1975)