Duende: Joëlle Léandre solo

Cecil Taylor: All The Notes

2005

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.

Thelonious Monk: Paris 1969

2013

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.

Safari Ya Gari

1961

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.

AFIJN (Misha Mengelberg)

2006

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.

J.D. Allen Live

2010

John Coltrane Quartet: Live in Liège

1965

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.

Ornette: Made in America

1986

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

Thick Air

2020

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.

Milford Graves Live at Jamaica Arts Center

2023

Filmed in and around percussionist Milford Grave’s last public concert in his neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens.

Grateful Dead: The Broadcast Archives

2008

Grateful Dead - The Broadcast Archives

This Is the Life

2008

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.

Mike Garson and His 88 Friends

2019

An intimate documentary portrait of world-class improvisational and traditional pianist Mike Garson as he tours, performs, and teaches.

Tigre

2013

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

The Cry of Jazz

1959

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

2009

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.