Movies: Jazz

Will Handy grows up in Memphis with his preacher father and his Aunt Hagar. His father intends for him to use his musical gifts only in church, but he can't stay away from the music of the streets and workers. After he writes a theme song for a local...

Behind one of the best-selling jazz records of all time, Keith Jarrett’s 1975 Köln Concert, how it almost didn’t happen, and how one formidable German teenager, Vera Brandes, breaks every boundary to set the conditions for the creation of a masterpie...

Director — and piano player — Clint Eastwood explores his life-long passion for piano blues, using a treasure trove of rare historical footage in addition to interviews and performances by such living legends as Pinetop Perkins and Jay McShann, as we...

Kirk Whalum presents this music documentary-cum-live concert performance exploring the impact of jazz on modern retellings of the Gospel. The film includes performances by Kirk Whalum himself along with George Duke, Lalah Hathaway, Doc Powell and Kev...

A fifteen-year-old boy wants to buy a gun from an adult racketeer named Priest, in order to become president of the gang to which he belongs, and to return them to active "bopping" (gang fighting) which has declined in Harlem....

The mice are on the loose after hours in a doctor's office, playing with the various pieces of medical apparatus. Susie Mouse is caged for research until her lover Johnnie frees her. A mouse orchestra plays a swinging wedding song. But throughout, a ...

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....

I Love to Singa depicts the story of a young owl who wants to sing jazz, instead of the classical music that his German parents wish him to perform. The plot is a lighthearted tribute to Al Jolson's film The Jazz Singer....

John Pettibone (Droopy), a dog whose love of Dixieland music is not appreciated by those around him, has a lucky meeting with Pee-Wee Runt and his All-Flea Dixieland band at the circus....

The relationship between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress provides a retrospective of the great African-American entertainers of the early 1900s....

Eddie Warmack, an African American jazz musician, is released from prison for the killing of a white gangster. Not willing to play for the mobsters who control the music industry, including clubs and recording studios, Warmack searches for his mento...

Explore the vision behind the iconic American jazz record label. Since 1939, Blue Note artists have been encouraged to push creative boundaries in search of uncompromising expressions. Through current recording sessions, rare archive and conversation...

In his five-decade career, the 1950s and 1960s were Frank Sinatra's Golden Age. He was at the top of his game in music, film and television, becoming the most popular artist on the planet....

24 hours in the life of three Swedish girls in Paris. Seduced by the excitement but short of money they earn a few francs as nude models in an art school....

"What would the world be like without Beethoven?" That’s the provocative question posed by this music documentary from Deutsche Welle. To answer it, the film explores how Ludwig van Beethoven's innovations continue to have an impact far beyond the bo...

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 lab...

A film without a beginning or an end, Moment to Moment is a rush of curious sketches, scenes, and shots that takes on a rhythmic life of its own....

Show Girls celebrates Montreal's swinging Black jazz scene from the 1920s to the 1960s, when the city was wide open. Three women who danced in the legendary Black clubs of the day - Rockhead's Paradise, The Terminal, Café St. Michel - share their unf...

It's 1959 in a seedy bar in Philadelphia, and Billie Holiday is giving one of her last performances interlaced with salty, often humorous, reminiscences to project a riveting portrait of the lady and her music 4 months before her death....

A young radio announcer living in Warsaw, who also is a swing and jazz musician, continually feuds with his landlord, a classical musician. A mixup of names and apartments leads to amusing complications as the young tenant falls in love with a young ...