Movies: Free jazz

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, for...

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 re...

Sometimes you’re at home with a friend and you tell them that if you don’t leave you’ll be late and the response is a crazy, unexpected and utter frenzy....

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

How do you become Peter Brötzmann? How do you become what you are: a painter, a musician, an absolute artist? Europe was nothing but a ruin and shame possessed the heart of the young Germans. They needed to invent, scream, regain a lost brotherhood. ...

"This film explores how freedom of speech — including dissent — is afforded to all Americans, and shows freedom of expression in art, music, dance, architecture, and science. The film also emphasizes the importance of the individual’s contribution to...

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 i...

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

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 phy...

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 batter...

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 evol...

Filmed during Max Devereaux’s senior year of high school with classmates as cast and crew, this black-and-white short tells the story of a man who wakes from a nightmare only to find the undead stalking the night. Originally released in 2013 with an ...

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...

Documentary about the Chicago jazz scene....

...

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 ...

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 comp...

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

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

A perspective and reflection on the work of Gabriel Ferrandini....