• The Princess is made entirely of old footage: TV excerpts, and home movies.
• The film places Diana in the context of her era and investigates how her treatment represented public opinion.
• The Princess offers a few shocks as a time capsule of a well-lived existence. 

Princess Diana is seen in a new clip driving away from a private gym. In the 1990s, photographers jostled for her picture. Robert Kilroy chat show. A speaker rants. The woman screams, “She’s rich enough to have a gym of her own!” “In my two-bedroom flat in Peckham, I’ve got my exercise bike in the front room. You can’t tell me a woman on hundreds of thousands of pounds a year with a house as big as hers can’t have her own gymnasium. ” She’s furious. Kilroy-Silk: “She likes people.” She won’t budge. “She likes to be bloody well watched!”

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The latest film in the Diana Memorial Industrial Complex, which includes The Crown and Spencer and retells a narrative everyone knows. Whether you’re a republican, a royalist, old or young, you know Diana’s story. Your cat may learn in time. The Princess is made entirely of old footage:  TV excerpts, and home movies. The film reminds us that Diana was never off camera.

The Princess offers a few shocks as a time capsule of a well-lived existence. Its method places Diana in the context of her era and investigates how her treatment represented public opinion. It portrays Britain as it was, is, and may always be. Or of British craziness. Diana is seen as a Thatcherism-healing balm. The public has called her a hero, a madwoman, an operator, and a witch. She’s saintly in death. The film was inspired by the bizarre extremes she portrayed.

Producer Simon Chinn was hesitant. Is another Diana documentary needed? We didn’t expect any new insights. We can narrate the narrative differently. “An ‘archive only’ approach allows the audience to project their own kind of hindsight onto it: their knowledge, prejudices, and baggage.”

Ed Perkins: “Yes, this is a film about Diana. But it’s also about celebrity culture and the culture we live in. There are clear parallels between the way we became obsessed with and lived voyeuristically through, Diana’s life and the way we engage with celebrity culture today. I also think it’s very easy to tell the Diana story through the lens of the tabloids or press intrusion. Clearly, that’s a part of this story. But perhaps the more difficult question is what [all of that] says about us and our role in what happened. This film isn’t about assigning blame, but it is about trying to be self-critical and honest about ourselves. “

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