Atlanta musicians behind some of the biggest names in music embark on an uncertain journey into the spotlight with a new genre of music that fuses trap music with jazz.
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Born on a sharecropping plantation in Northern Florida, Ray Charles went blind at seven. Inspired by a fiercely independent mom who insisted he make his own way, He found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful singer gained a reputation and then exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered coupling gospel and country together.
Boundary-pushing Russian dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein selects renowned French composer Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. Ravel ends up creating his greatest success ever: Boléro.
An egotistical saxophone player and a young singer meet on V-J Day and embark upon a strained and rocky romance, even as their careers begin a long uphill climb.
In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.
Dizzy Gillespie is one of the major figures of the 20th Century's music scene. Everything was once said or written about this genius musician, founder of the Bebop. Whereas his public life is known from most, many ignore about the modest side of his character and the story of his long and deep friendship with a man rather unknown from the general public, the Swiss engineer Jacques Muyal. Through previously unrevealed archives as well as musical extracts, this documentary explores the story of the friendship between a genius trumpeter and a man crazy about Jazz.
"What would the world be like without Beethoven?" That’s the provocative question posed by this music documentary from Deutsche Welle. To answer it, the film explores how Ludwig van Beethoven's innovations continue to have an impact far beyond the boundaries of classical music, 250 years after his birth.
Starting from the determination and great desire to create a music concert to embrace peace in Ambon City, Glenn ultimately gave up all his income to hold the concert.
In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.
A biographical film featuring the music and times of Bill Evans with interviews from Tony Bennett, Jack Dejohnette, Billy Taylor, Paul Motian, Jon Hendricks, Orin Keepnews, Bobby Brookmeyer, Pat Evans and more, including family and friends who knew Bill Evans well.
Tenor saxophone master Sonny Rollins has long been hailed as one of the most important artists in jazz history, and still, today, he is viewed as the greatest living jazz improviser. In 1986, filmmaker Robert Mugge produced Saxophone Colossus, a feature-length portrait of Rollins, named after one of his most celebrated albums.
In the late 1990s, iconic photographer Bruce Weber barely managed to convince legendary actor Robert Mitchum (1917-97) to let himself be filmed simply hanging out with friends, telling anecdotes from his life and recording jazz standards.
Laufey takes the audience on a spell-binding sonic journey under the stars, performing alongside the legendary Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Sun Ra and his Solar Myth Arkestra return to Earth after several years in space. Ra proclaims himself "the alter-destiny", meets with inner-city youths and battles with the devil himself to save the black race.
Combining footage unseen since WWI with original scores from the era, this film tells the story of Noble Sissle's incredible journey that spans "The Harlem Hellfighters" of World War I, Broadway Theatre, the Civil Rights movement, and decades of Black cultural development.
"It must schwing!" was the motto of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, two German Jewish immigrants who in 1939 set up Blue Note Records, the jazz label that was home to such greats as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins. Blue Note, the most successful movie ever made about jazz, is a testimony to the passion and vision of these two men and certainly swings like the propulsive sounds that made their label so famous.
During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls and must decide between music and love.
The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.
‘Lady Day’ was one of the greatest jazz vocalists the world ever heard. In 1971, journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie Holiday. Before her mysterious death in 1978, Lipnack Kuehl had taped over 200 hours of interviews. The tapes have never been heard. Now they form the basis of an atmospheric, multi-layered documentary that captures the many complex facets of a proud black woman, violent drug addict, loyal friend, vindictive lover and unforgettable singer of ‘God Bless The Child’, ‘Saddest Tale’ and the haunting ‘Strange Fruit’.
What was supposed to be a 40 minute performance gets extended another 20 minutes with 3 more songs to the already sung 35 songs in Bing’s only fully televised concert! Recorded a month and a half before his death, we see Bing in great form performing many songs he was associated with. He is accompanied by the Joe Bushkin Quartet and his son Harry Crosby.
A vibrant tribute to one of America's legendary bandleaders, charting Glenn Miller's rise from obscurity and poverty to fame and wealth in the early 1940s.
Bootlegger/cafe owner, Johnny Franks recruits crude working man Scorpio to join his gang, masterminded by crooked criminal defense lawyer Newton. Scorpio eventually takes over Frank's operation, beats a rival gang, becomes wealthy, and dominates the city for several years until a secret group of six masked businessmen have him prosecuted and sent to the electric chair.
Learning sight words has never been this easy! Many words don't follow basic decoding rules and are taught in pre-k and kindergarten classrooms as "sight words", "instant words", "high frequency words" or "star words." A new reader finds sight words very frustrating until they are memorized. A good reader will be able to instantly recognize sight words without having to figure them out. Preschool Prep Company makes learning sight words fun and easy by implementing the technique used in their other award winning DVDs. Now children can master sight words with the same rapid speed that they learned letters, numbers, shapes and colors!
Known for his unmistakable cascading strings and recordings such as Charmaine, Mantovani enthralled the world with his sublime arrangements. This is the story of the man and his music.
Friends battle former U.S. presidents when they come back from the dead as zombies on the Fourth of July.
The execution was scheduled and the last meal consumed. The coolness of the poisons entering the blood system slowed the heart rate and sent him on the way to Judgement. He had paid for his crime with years on Death Row waiting for this moment and now he would pay for them again as the judgment continued..
After drinking all night, Monty and his friend try to get home, but it turns out to be not easy. The next day, Monty tries to win the heart of a theater actress.
It is 200 years before the birth of Christ and Rome is the new superpower of the ancient world. She believes she is invincible - but one man is destined to change that. He is a man bound by oath to avenge the wrongs inflicted on his home and, in pursuit of revenge, he will stop at nothing. Hannibal explores the man behind the myth, revealing what drove the 26-year-old to mastermind one of the most audacious military moves in history. With 40,000 soldiers and 37 elephants, he marched 1,500 miles to challenge his enemies on their own soil. It was an act so daring that few people believed it possible.
A group of friends try to defeat an evil king, and meet some quirky characters along the way.
This 15-minute DVD follows the adaptation of LOTR for the stage, and features rehearsal and show footage of the initial production in Toronto as well as interviews with the creative team now preparing for the London production.
An experiment into what the director termed 'colour rhythm'.
A deformed hunchback is given a second chance at life, but then he breaks the rules of his benefactor and is transformed into a horrific monster.
An outlaw and his ex-con grandfather team up for a big score, but a ruthless killer stands in their way.
The adventures of a Little Grey Fergie tractor with a magical spark plug which makes him a living being, and his “family” and the people working on their farm.
After an alleged malpractice that led to the death of his brother, heart surgeon Daniel Guth took the consequences: he gave up his beloved job and retreated into the solitude of nature. At his place of refuge, the Salzburg mountains, the heiress to a private clinic is desperately looking for a capable chief physician. Daniel declines the post, although he finds the woman attractive. When a boy is seriously injured in a bus accident, he is confronted with his trauma again.
One person decided to sell the trailer, which he used as a dacha. And he went to the Black Sea, to the southernmost edge of Russia, where there is a trailer to sell it. But the trailer is not in a simple place. And in a place where the most important questions of life arise. Where a person is alone with himself. Where the mechanism of the universe is almost exposed. Where happiness is about to turn from a fleeting sensation into a permanent state. Where it seems that you can cut off all unnecessary and achieve freedom. Or is it just age? Time, not place?
In Paris, in 1943, Jules, a 19-year-old Jew, lived without an ideal, tossed about by circumstances. He becomes in turn a traitor then a hero. Thomas, his fifteen-year-old brother, wants to act and fight in resistance.
When the need to be something other than what we are becomes too much to bare, sometimes we choose the extreme solution to our problem. The result can change us forever, but leave us with conflicted feelings that are still too much to bare.
