A feature- length documentary on the life and work of jazz musician and composer Krzysztof Komeda.
Social & External
Self (archive footage)
Self
In this intimate portrait—produced for a segment of National Education Television's "Black Journal" television program—legendary jazz musician Alice Coltrane plays the harp and discusses her thoughts on music, spirituality, family, and the legacy of her late husband, John Coltrane.
The Harlem Blues & Jazz Band during its sunset years: 87-year-old Al Casey, who had worked closely with Fats Waller throughout the 1930s; guitarist Lawrence Lucie, 95 years young, from the bands of Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter and Duke Ellington; saxophonist Bubba Brooks, 79, who was with Bill Doggett; Edwin Swanston, 80, pianist with Louis Armstrong's Orchestra; 91-year-old drummer Johnny Blowers, ex-Bunny Berigan, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra; Ivan Rolle, 85, bassist with Jonah Jones; and 88-year-old Laurel Watson, one-time vocalist with Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Baron's cameras record the musicians through their tours and concerts, capturing their joy in performing together. A celebration of the jazz spirit.
In his five-decade career, the 1950s and 1960s were Frank Sinatra's Golden Age. He was at the top of his game in music, film and television, becoming the most popular artist on the planet.
Elijah Jamal Balbed grew up in Washington DC in the midst of one of its most difficult eras, as its identity was being tested. As the city changed around him, his budding career as a musician exposed him to the people and music providing a voice and an outlet to the people of DC. Now tasked with preserving and sharing that tradition, Balbed reflects on balancing that responsibility with creating a musical identity of his own.
A documentary on the life of Amy Winehouse, the immensely talented yet doomed songstress. We see her from her teen years, where she already showed her singing abilities, to her finding success and then her downward spiral into alcoholism and drugs.
An interview with composer Pino Donaggio about his score for the 1973 film DON'T LOOK NOW.
An immersive look at the eventful life and brilliant artistic career of visionary American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991).
Wild Man Blues is a 1998 documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple, about the musical avocation of actor/director/comic Woody Allen. The film takes its name from a jazz composition sometimes attributed to Jelly Roll Morton and sometimes to Louis Armstrong and recorded by both (among others). Allen's love of early 20th century New Orleans music is depicted through his 1996 tour of Europe with his New Orleans Jazz Band. Allen has played clarinet with this band for over 25 years. Although Allen's European tour is the film's primary focus, it was also notable as the first major public showcase for Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.
In the late sixties, the American saxophone player and living jazz legend Ben Webster lived in Amsterdam for a year. Webster, who was born in Kansas City in 1909, was a unique personality in the world of jazz and blues. In the thirties, he played with all the great names. During his Amsterdam period, he stayed with an elderly landlady, Mrs Hardloper, with whom he appeared on a national talk show. In conversations with Van der Keuken, he muses on the past; on the fantastic experience of playing in the renowned Duke Ellington band; or on one of his best friends, who was so deft at eating with a knife and fork. Short, fragmented remarks, which Van der Keuken has edited in a loose, improvised editing style.
The picture brings interviews with the participants of the 1st São Paulo Jazz Festival that occurred in Anhembi Conventions Palace in September 1978 and reunited musicians, composers and singers from all around the world.
Portrait of the jazz great during his self-enforced exile from his audience as protest against the war in Vietnam. Filmed playing with students in Harlem, in the countryside, and on the Williamsburg Bridge, Rollins' melodic sense throughout the film is as probing as soulful as ever.
Show Girls celebrates Montreal's swinging Black jazz scene from the 1920s to the 1960s, when the city was wide open. Three women who danced in the legendary Black clubs of the day - Rockhead's Paradise, The Terminal, Café St. Michel - share their unforgettable memories of life at the centre of one of the world's hottest jazz spots. From the Roaring Twenties, through the Second World War and on into the golden era of clubs in the fifties and sixities, Show Girls chronicles the lives of Bernice, Tina and Olga - mixing their memories with rarely seen footage of the era.
Archive performances and interviews explore the influence of the four major jazz albums made in 1959 by Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman.
The documentary tracks the diva's difficult progress as she emerges from the tough, testosterone-fuelled world of the big bands of the 30s and 40s, to fill nightclubs and saloons across the US in the 50s and early 60s as a force in her own right. Looking at the lives and careers of six individual singers (Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone and Annie Ross), the film not only talks to those who knew and worked with these queens of jazz, but also to contemporary singers who sit on the shoulders of these trailblazing talents without having to endure the pain and hardship it took for them to make their highly individual voices heard above the prejudice of mid-century America.
A documentary about the legendary jazz label Blue Note Records and its German founders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. As jews they had to flee Germany and the Hitler regime in the late 1930s. In New York they wrote music history with their record label Blue Note Records.
A documentary on the late French jazz pianist.
Documentary about the mid-20th century Vegas bandleader and trumpeter Louis Prima, who showed the world what a rock show could be.
Sayonara, Goto-san. is a recording of Midori's final show at Tokyo LIQUIDROOM on December 30, 2010, released on DVD on April 6, 2011.
Satchmo. There are few people in this country - or around the world - who will not recognize that name. Louis Armstrong embodied 20th-century American culture. He revolutionized the world of music and became one of the nation's most influential entertainers. No other performer of his era has such a profound effect as a singer as well as an instrumentalist.
All-Star concert recorded at Lincoln Center in 1982 -- Featuring Max Roach, Jon Faddis, John Lewis and Milt Jackson.
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