A Night for Jeff Buckley: BIFF Closes On A High
- Ben Preece
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
A powerful screening of It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley and a full-album performance of Grace make BIFF’s gala closing night an evening rich with emotion, reverence and musical electricity.
IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY —
BIFF CLOSING NIGHT SCREENING AND MUSIC GALA
SOUTH BANK PIAZZA
SUNDAY, 30TH NOVEMBER 2025
Photos by Issaro Kayunsumrutket
Words by Ben Preece
For more than three decades, the Brisbane International Film Festival has connected Queensland audiences with the world’s most visionary filmmakers — but this year’s closing night may well be one of its high-water marks. Returning with a renewed vision and a stacked program, BIFF closes 2025 with the Queensland premiere of It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, the new documentary from director Amy Berg.
Driving the night with unmistakable passion is Brisbane’s own Katie Noonan. Fresh off touring her Grace tribute show, she rallies a bulletproof lineup of local singers, a note-perfect band, and, of course, the classic album celebrating its 30th anniversary. Not many records justify a four-hour event — but then again, not many albums are Grace.
The Film — It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
There are few adequate words to capture Jeff Buckley’s impact — the sheer emotional force of his voice, the mythology that trails him, the way Grace burrows into generations of listeners. But in It’s Never Over, Berg makes a concerted effort to ground the legend in something fully human. She presents Buckley as an all-consuming sponge for sound: curious, voracious, gifted, but also full of the strengths, flaws, vulnerabilities and blind spots that shape a young man still finding his way. “He drank up the world like a sponge,” recalls Rebecca Moore, his first girlfriend in New York and his partner into the East Village art scene. And as later partner Joan Wasser (the incomparable Joan As Police Woman) puts it, “He heard the whole of his person in the music.” Those two lines alone explain so much: Buckley doesn’t just absorb the world — he translates himself through it.
The film traces his friendships — including a tender, revealing thread with Chris Cornell — and shows how his restless artistry ripples outward, from inspiring Radiohead’s early breakthroughs to his unwavering devotion to Led Zeppelin. In one astonishing sequence, he risks his own safety just to get as close as possible to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in 1996. Fame means nothing to him; the only thing he chases is a legacy that can outlive him.
His musical influences are as wildly eclectic as they are ardent — Judy Garland to Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Soundgarden to Bill Evans and even Shostakovich. Moore and others describe how this swirling palette fuses with the experimental pulse of the East Village in the 1990s. It’s here, inside the tiny café Sin-é, that Buckley finds his artistic crucible: riffing freely, covering whatever moves him, unveiling originals that stop the room cold. Word spreads quickly. A bidding war erupts. Buckley signs with Columbia, three decades after the label had taken a chance on an unknown Bob Dylan.
The documentary shifts into the creation of Grace — mythic now, but only a modest commercial performer in the US upon release. Berg captures his fraught relationship with attention; the way fame interrupts the ordinary life he relies on for inspiration. “Without ordinary life, there is no art,” he says in archival voiceover. Even as success finds him, “that really insecure person is always there,” Moore reflects — a reminder of the shy, anxious heart beating beneath the icon.
The pressure to deliver a second album intensifies everything. Friends describe how the strain — some of it label-driven, much of it self-inflicted — compounds the emotional turbulence he is already navigating. Buckley often refers to himself as manic-depressive, and those close to him sense those highs and lows sharpening in his late twenties. His move to Memphis is described as a deliberate attempt to find quiet, space, and something closer to ordinary life again.
Yet no one reduces him to darkness. Loved ones recall a man who is quick to laugh, witty, mischievous, open, and startlingly tender. Wasser notes that his sensitivity “isn’t crushed the way it is in other men,” and that lightness threads its way beautifully through the film.
His death at 30 — just as work on the second album is finally ready to begin in earnest — leaves behind unfinished recordings, debt to his label, and a cluster of intimate voicemails to loved ones that Berg includes to devastating effect. It also leaves behind a difficult question: how do you preserve a legacy that never had the chance to settle? Since 1997, eight live albums and multiple compilations surface; his transcendent cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah hits No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 2008. A new wave of listeners — many born after he died — discover Grace on TikTok, proof that Buckley’s voice continues to find, haunt, and inspire anyone ready to receive it.
The Performance
If the film casts a spell, the performance that follows mostly manages to hold it — especially whenever the music takes the lead. A few extended speeches gently diffuse the momentum the film builds so carefully, but the essence of Jeff remains intact. And each time the band strikes up, the energy lifts instantly. Ten singers step forward, each inhabiting a different corner of Grace, turning the night into something closer to a communal rite than a conventional tribute.
The run-sheet rolls out like this:
‘Mojo Pin’ — Mark Moroney ‘Grace’ — Asha Jefferies ‘Last Goodbye’ — Jack Carty ‘Lilac Wine’ — Tyrone Noonan ‘So Real’ — Moreton ‘Hallelujah’ — Jude York & Kate Ceberano ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’ — Katie Noonan ‘Corpus Christi Carol’ — Katie Noonan & Moreton ‘Eternal Life’ — Sue Ray ‘Dream Brother’ — Jaguar Jonze
No one misses a beat. Mark Moroney opens with a beautifully contained ‘Mojo Pin’, establishing the emotional temperature of the night. Jack Carty steps into the pressure-cooker that is ‘Last Goodbye’ — a song that could so easily buckle under expectation — and holds it with stoic steadiness. Tyrone Noonan gives ‘Lilac Wine’ a poised, luminous treatment, honouring both Nina Simone’s and Buckley’s fingerprints on the song.
Then one of the night’s genuine peaks arrives: the criminally underrated Moreton takes on ‘So Real’ with a performance that might genuinely define the word grace — calm, assured, devastating — while Katie Noonan’s 20-year-old son Dexter absolutely nails his one appearance on drums behind her. The room collectively leans forward as she whispers, “I love you / But I’m afraid to love you” into the mic.
Jude York’s ‘Hallelujah’ begins stirring, but with surprise guest Kate Ceberano, they transform it into a transcendent, jaw-dropping moment — a renewed revival of a song nearly flattened by its own ubiquity. After an evening of hosting, gesturing and tambourine flourishes, Katie Noonan finally sits behind her keyboard for her personal favourite, ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’. She delivers it with tenderness, restraint and deep connection. Moreton returns to duet on the album’s third cover, ‘Corpus Christi Carol’ (composed by 20th-century British musician Benjamin Britten), and the blend of their voices hits the room with quiet force. Sue Ray brilliantly belts ‘Eternal Life’, the album’s pure rock/grunge detonation — and the band is visibly delighted. Jaguar Jonze closes with ‘Dream Brother’, steering straight into its shadowed edges, connecting completely and tapping into its darker pulse for a finale that feels focused, fearless and quietly devastating — one that lands with precision, presence and undeniable weight.
By the final note, the room is glowing. That unmistakable collective exhale only happens when a beloved album is handled with both reverence and guts. And the band deserves special recognition: they are the backbone of the entire night, replicating the intricate, volatile dynamics of Grace with remarkable precision and affection. Each musician clearly holds their own relationship with the album close. And Noonan’s passion — never hidden — radiates through every cue, every introduction, every breath.
Between Berg’s intimate, unflinching documentary and a tribute performance overflowing with love, Brisbane doesn’t just revisit Grace — it re-enters the emotional universe of a once-in-a-generation artist whose legacy refuses to settle. Buckley’s story remains unfinished, unfixed, alive in the way only great art can be. And on this night, Brisbane plays its small part in carrying that legacy forward.
