
29 Apr 1968

The World of the Seekers
While flying to the first stop on their latest tour, the four members of the Australian music group The Seekers recall in flashback the origins of the group and their rise to success.
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.
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29 Apr 1968
While flying to the first stop on their latest tour, the four members of the Australian music group The Seekers recall in flashback the origins of the group and their rise to success.
26 Nov 2022
Stories and music of Black artists who relied on an underground travel guide to navigate the injustices of racial segregation while on the road. The Negro Travelers’ Green Book was a directory of lodgings, restaurants, and entertainment venues where African Americans were welcomed. Features performances and interviews with vocalists, musicians, activists, historians, and others.
09 Nov 2004
Filmed with an intimate three camera shoot by Antonio Ferrera, a close friend of John Zorn and a long time cameraman for the documentary masters the Maysles Brothers, this concert film captures the band performing a set of Zorn's Masada compositions at their home base in the Lower East Side, Tonic, in the summer of 1999.
25 Apr 2008
The multi-award-winning Finnish documentarian Mika Kaurismäki, brother of Aki Kaurismäki (The Man Without a Past), helms the nonfiction work Sonic Mirror -- a protracted exploration of rhythm as one of life's driving forces. Revered drummer Billy Cobham serves as host, taking the audience on a long musical journey around the world and through a myriad of musical genres and styles. Cobham, Kaurismäki, and co. segue from Western concert halls and stages to the music of African tribes performed by Brazilian street children to the distinct music of autistic patients. Along the way, the filmmakers raise serious questions about the function of music as an identifying force, a means of communication, and an emotional release; they also probe the enduring connections between group awareness and self-awareness. The film ultimately builds to a hugely affirming and cathartic expression of music as collective expression that unifies its performers in spirit.
01 Feb 1989
This profile of storied trumpeter of jazz, Tiny Davis, and her cohort pianist-drummer, Ruby Lucas, is an amalgam of artifacts about the two women, accompanied with poetry by Cheryl Clarke.
03 May 2007
During a decade rife with paranoia, in the middle of the McCarthy era, Music Inn was a bold experiment. Halfway between the Second World War and The Civil Rights Movement, Phil and Stephanie Barber created an oasis in the Berkshire Hills in Western Massachusetts where aspiring musicians came to learn from the very best. Students and faculty, young and old, rich and poor, white, black, and brown convened together and learned from each other. Defying the surrounding environment, Music Inn harbored a racial and cultural harmony where music was all that mattered.
12 Nov 2010
Chicago's Chess Records was one of the greatest labels of the post-war era, ranking alongside other mighty independents like Atlantic, Stax and Sun. From 1950 till its demise at the end of the 60s, Chess released a myriad of electric blues, rock 'n' roll and soul classics that helped change the landscape of black and white popular music. Chess was the label that gave the world such sonic adventurers as Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf and Etta James. In this BBC 4 documentary to mark the label's 60th anniversary, the likes of Jimmy Page, Mick Hucknall, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Paul Jones and Little Steven, as well as those attached to the label such as founder's son Marshall Chess, pay tribute to its extraordinary music and influence.
22 Mar 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.
05 May 1944
In this short film, prominent jazz musicians of the 1940s gather for a rare filming of a jam session. This highly stylized chronicle features tenor sax legend Lester Young.
24 Jun 2007
Jazz Icons: Dave Brubeck boasts two beautifully filmed concerts from one of the most beloved quartets in jazz history. Captured at the pinnacle of their power and popularity, Paul Desmond (alto sax), Joe Morello (drums), Eugene Wright (bass) and Dave Brubeck (piano) explore the trails they blazed into the realm of odd time signatures with "Forty Days" and two versions of their groundbreaking hit "Take Five", as well as forays into world music with two unique interpretations of "Koto Song". Their intimate onstage chemistry and impeccable musicianship made the DBQ an award-winning jazz supergroup.
17 Nov 2009
This concert from the Jazz legend was recorded in 1973 with a very similar line-up to the later releases Dark Magus, Agharta, and Pangaea, featuring Al Foster on drums, Michael Henderson on bass, Mtume on percussion, Dave Liebman on sax, and, most importantly, Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey on guitar. It contains some material from the previously listed albums, and plenty that is not, at least in any recognizable form. Jazz VIP. 2009.
07 Jun 2006
_Jazz Icons: Louis Armstrong_ is one of the only known complete Armstrong concerts from the 1950s to be captured on film. This 55-minute set, filmed in Belgium in 1959, features many of Satchmo's greatest songs including "Mack The Knife", "When It’s Sleepy Time Down South" and "Stompin' At The Savoy," backed by his stellar band the All-Stars, featuring Trummy Young, Peanuts Hucko, Billy Kyle, Danny Barcelona and Mort Herbert.
18 Apr 2020
Motian In Motion is a documentary film about iconic jazz drummer Paul Motian, with rare footage of Paul playing and recording at the world renowned Village Vanguard, Birdland and other venues.
02 Jul 2015
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.
21 Sep 2006
The prophetic jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, who today is seen as one of the most important innovators in jazz, was obsessed with his radical music and by the thought that people one day would understand it. In 1962 he recorded his first album in Sweden. Eight years later he was found dead in New York's East River, aged 34. (TCM)
05 Feb 1956
A night at the Wood Green Jazz Club - an example of 'Free Cinema'.
30 Nov 2017
On November 30, 2017 the National Park Service and National Park Foundation will present the annual National Christmas Tree Lighting. Popular entertainers and a United States military band add to the celebratory evening.
31 Aug 1957
Johan van der Keuken's first film is a uniquely beautiful portrait of Paris at dawn.
09 Feb 2020
A feature-length tour of Amsterdam's thriving jazz scene.
02 Nov 2006
A comprehensive history of European Jazz, exploring the origins of the US-influenced Jazz clubs after the Second World War, the first steps independent of American jazz and the various changes of direction that have repeatedly occurred in European jazz in the search for that "own voice" that European jazz musicians have helped to form. Featuring the great masters of European jazz such as Chris Barber, Jan Garbarek, Juliette Gréco, Stefano Bollani and Till Brönner, to name but a few.