Social & External
Joëlle Léandre
Aspiring director Corky St. Clair and the marginally talented amateur cast of his hokey small-town musical production go overboard when they learn that Broadway theater agent Mort Guffman will be in attendance.
This early travelogue film, made in a Kenyan train station, captures an impromptu musical performance. Some passengers eagerly join in while others sleep—blissfully unaware of the performance taking place around them.
Two college students set out to capture a ghost on film to make millions instead of doing their finals.
Live archive release from the Jazz legend. Thelonious Monk Paris 1969 is a fascinating and important late-career document of the legendary Jazz pianist and composer in performance with his Quartet at the Salle Pleyel concert hall in Paris, France on December 15, 1969. The concert also featured a surprise guest appearance from renowned drummer Philly Joe Jones. Filmed in Black & White.
At an orphanage, the children are sad because they received used defective toys as gifts. Professor Grampy sees the children while passing by in his sled and has an idea on how to give them a merry Christmas.
Cecil Taylor was the grand master of free jazz piano. "All the Notes" captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and battered piano in his Brooklyn brownstone the maestro holds court with frequent stentorian pronouncements on life, art and music.
A perspective and reflection on the work of Gabriel Ferrandini.
In 1989, a collective of young hip hop artists gathered at a health food café in South Central Los Angeles. Their mandate? To reject gang culture and expand the musical boundaries of hip hop. DuVernay's documentary chronicles the historic legacy of the Good Life Cafe — the open mic nights that became an L.A. institution, the eclectic array of talented young MCs that emerged there, the alternative hip hop movement they developed, and their worldwide influence on the artform.
In January 2025, experimental jazz duo Myshko Birchenko and Yevhen Puhachov, members of Hyphen Dash, travelled to Kramatorsk without any pre-made drafts or demo recordings to use music as a vessel to capture the emotions present in a place on the edge of a battle for survival and explore the therapeutic nature of music and improvisation in the brutal reality of war. They packed all the equipment into a car, drove 700 kilometres from Kyiv to the frontline city Kramatorsk, and turned one of many basements which serve as shelters into a makeshift recording studio. As a result, they recorded over 300 minutes of music, which were eventually distilled into a 90-minute album.
This feature-length documentary chronicles the life and playful methods of Dutch pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg, a significant figure in post-WWII European Jazz and free improvisation. Archival footage, rehearsal / performance sequences and interviews with both Mengelberg (the "godfather of Dutch improvised music") and key collaborators provide a clear insight in Mengelberg's original way of thinking and way of working.
An experimental music ensemble is recording an album. They want a very specific sound: the sound of thick air. The sound engineer struggles to understand and to find that sound. A tale of sleepless nights and loud music, a noise-injected collage composed of diaristic footage, a found narrative (memories of a popular 60s band), original music and field recordings.
An intimate documentary portrait of world-class improvisational and traditional pianist Mike Garson as he tours, performs, and teaches.
Grateful Dead - The Broadcast Archives
Although the free jazz movement of the 1960s and '70s was much maligned in some jazz circles, its pioneers - brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane - are today acknowledged as central to the evolution of jazz as America's most innovative art form. FIRE MUSIC showcases the architects of a movement whose radical brand of improvisation pushed harmonic and rhythmic boundaries, and produced landmark albums like Coleman's Free Jazz: A Collective Inspiration and Coltrane's Ascension. A rich trove of archival footage conjures the 1960s jazz scene along with incisive reflections by critic Gary Giddins and a number of the movement's key players.
Shirley Clarke's frenetic documentary about multi-talented musician Ornette Coleman.
Recorded at Auditório Ibirapuera in Sao Paulo , on 24 and 25 June 2006 , the album features the biggest hits singer-songwriter Lenine's career such as "Paciência" (Patience), "Jack Soul Brasileiro" (Since I am Brazilian), "Na Pressão" (On The Pressure), "A Rede" (The Net), "Hoje Eu Quero Sair Só" (I Want Go Out Alone, Today) and "A Medida da Paixão" (The Measure of Passion), plus new songs like "Tudo Por Acaso" (All By Chance). The album features special participations from musicians such as the Chilean Victor Astorga (the first English horn soloist with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra), Cameroonian bassist and singer Richard Bona, Mexican singer Julieta Venegas, harpist Cristina Braga, the rapper Gog, and drummer Iggor Cavalera (ex-member of Sepultura). The DVD includes bonus material, plus making-of scenes, reviews, testimonials about the project, the guests and also footage of the 2006 World Cup, since the performance was recorded concurrently with it.
Filmed in and around percussionist Milford Grave’s last public concert in his neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens.
Filmed in Chicago & finished in 1959, The Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race - a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Featured are ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white.
7 is a concert film of the Norwegian band supersilent. Recorded in Oslo in August of 2004, it is the first video release by the band after four records (1-3, 4, 5, 6), all released on Norway's Rune Grammofon label. This is completely improvised music, sometimes very noisy, sometimes very quiet and ethereal, and always very beautiful.
