Duende: Joëlle Léandre solo

Two college students set out to capture a ghost on film to make millions instead of doing their finals.

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 ...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

J.D. Allen Live

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.

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

Dobradiça Entrevista presents laid-back conversations and artistic performances for YouTube. Dobradiça Entrevista is under the umbrella of Dobradiça Enferrujada Records, a music label from the Federal District - DF, Brazil focused on free improvisation and experimental art.

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

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.

Two young strangers meet in Naples and begin to flirt and dance in the street.

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.

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.