Duende: Joëlle Léandre solo

Waiting for Guffman

August 1996 •English

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.

Sunny's Time Now

November 2008 •English

Retracing the longstanding career of avant-garde drummer Sunny Murray, one of the most influential figures of the Free jazz revolution. Through a series of interviews with key time witnesses as well as historic and contemporary concert footage, it reassesses the relationship between the libertarian music movement and the political events of the 1960s, whose social claims it so intimately reflected. By doing so, it also recounts how the most radical forms of musical expression were excluded from the major production and distribution networks as the libertarian ideal went out of fashion. Beyond its historical approach, the film follows Sunny Murray on current gigs, showing his daily struggle to perpetuate a musical genre which is still widely ignored by the general public. In doing so, Sunny's time now also dwells on the near-clandestine community of aficionados who continue to worship the gods of their musical coming of age, and whose unfaltering support has permitted free ...

Fire Music

September 2021 •English

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.

John Coltrane Quartet: Live in Liège

December 1965 •English

The bold and ferocious harmonic imagination of John Coltrane is laid bare in this concert, captured at the Comblain-La-Tour Festival in Belgium, 1965. Alongside his famed quartet, he delivers a transcendent performance that is marked by the total physicality of the music – four sets of hands moving with restless vigour as vapour literally rises from their shoulders and into the night sky.

Sonny Sharrock Band - Lucerna Hall Prague 4.10.90

Invalid date •English

The Sonny Sharrock Band live in Prague as part of the Knitting Factory Festival Tour of Europe 1990.

Christmas Comes But Once a Year

December 1936 •English

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.

Ornette: Made in America

February 1986 •English

Shirley Clarke's frenetic documentary about multi-talented musician Ornette Coleman.

This Is the Life

February 2008 •English

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.

City of the Winds

August 2003 •English

Documentary about the Chicago jazz scene.

Lenine: MTV Unplugged

June 2006 •Portuguese

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.

J.D. Allen Live

November 2010 •Spanish

Cecil Taylor: All The Notes

January 2005 •English

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.

Tigre

January 2013 •English

Tigre is an experimental film with animation applied directly onto film.

AFIJN (Misha Mengelberg)

January 2006 •English

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.

The Cry of Jazz

March 1959 •English

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.

We Don't Care About Music Anyway

September 2009 •English

From radical turntablism (Otomo Yoshihide) to laptop music innovation (Numb), via classical instrument hijacking (Sakamoto Hiromichi), Tokyo's avant-garde music scene is internationally known for its boldness. While introducing some of the greatest musicians of this scene, "We Don't Care About Music Anyway..." offers a kaleidoscopic view of Tokyo, confronting music and noise, sound and image, reality and representation, documentary and fiction.

The Making of Basement 626

June 2025 •Ukrainian

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.

Streetlight Opus

December 2023 •English

When two buskers find themselves situated on the same busy street corner, a musical battle ensues when the musicians realise that the lively city isn't big enough for the both of them

Angel Bat Dawid - Ground Control

October 2022 •English

Angel Bat Dawid - one of the great jazz discoveries of recent years as a guest at Chassol in Ground Control. Chicago-native Angel Bat Dawid is one of the many talents tracked down by the US label International Anthem. Together with trumpeter Jaimie Branch and drummer Makaya McCraven, Angel Bat Dawid ensures that the "Windy City" is on the radar for jazz all over the world. The musician switches between vocals, clarinet and piano with amazing ease. But apart from that, Angel Bat Dawid is able to breathe a highly spiritual dimension into her music like no other, so that her jazz almost borders on gospel. Listening to the multi-instrumentalist therefore sometimes has something of a transcendental experience, at times reminiscent of the music of Sun Ra. This concert at Ground Control reveals all the artistic glory of their music. Recording of July 4, 2022 at Ground Control, Paris.

Madeleine (a short film)

February 2025 •English

A stop motion/collaged based independent short film plays with the recontextualisation of memories and how time distorts them.