A Little Jive Is Good for You

In 1927, a Kansas City, Missouri cornet player and his band perform nightly at a seedy speakeasy until a racketeer tries to extort them in exchange for protection.

Louis Jordan's Orchestra perform Jordan Jive. Setting is a canteen, with the orchestra and audience in US military uniform. The Swing Maniacs go through some extremely strenuous acrobatic dancing.

The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.

A struggling band find themselves attached to a fugitive and drawn into a series of old feuds and love affairs, as they try to stay together and find musical success.

It’s the second semester of junior year for Pierce “Sparni” Sparnroft, a gifted jazz vibraphonist studying at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Sparni’s prospects on the vibes were rejuvenated by their new professor, the world-renowned Steve Nelson, and are to be showcased during a student-driven recital in May 2023. But all the while, Sparni must face a crisis within.

A group of prisoners are encouraged to form a jazz band and vow to go straight when they are released to tour the country. However, the trumpets and clarinets are just a cover for a series of robberies. Musical comedy, starring British jazz star Acker Bilk as himself, alongside Jimmy Thompson and Jennifer Jayne.

Set in 1980s Melbourne, a disgraced jazz pianist attempts to get back into his former band by sabotaging his replacement.

Bring It to the People - the film about the Brussels Jazz Orchestra

Set in Harlem in 1947, this film is the story of Grandpa Kansas and his jazz band that set out to become world famous only to be thwarted by jealousy and envy - leaving behind shattered dreams and deep regrets. Though made at NYU, this film was produced under Walt Disney / Hollywood Pictures Discretionary Fund Program, and has won the top prize in multiple film competitions by respected institutions, including The Black American Cinema Society, Black Filmmaker Hall of Fame, and the Atlanta / Image Film Festival.

A teenaged shoeshine boy urgently tries to raise the remaining amount of money he needs to purchase a secondhand bugle before 6p.m.

Drummer Stanley Maxton moves to Los Angeles with dreams of opening his own jazz club, but falls in with a gangster and a nightclub dancer and ends up accused of her murder.

Two apartment house dwellers, although unrelated, share the same name. One is an older man with an appreciation for and love of classical music, while the other is a younger man addicted to swing music. The niece of the older man arrives for a visit and gets into the wrong apartment. Complications arise.

after mourning the passing of his late wife, Bill finds the courage to travel to New York City and reconnect with his favorite mistress.

When a conniving female singer turns up dead, with the evidence pointing to the band’s drummer, jazz trumpeter Danny Brooks attempts to clear him—only to implicate himself and the rest of the band in the process. Can a jazz-loving police detective and Danny’s fiancée solve the case before the next downbeat?

Standards I/II

A ferocious, bullying music teacher teaches a dedicated student.

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.

Pink Martini Live at Jazz Open Stuttgart

Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity.

This jazz musical short has a comedy plot about marital infidelity. Bandleader Cab Calloway plays a ladies man who dates the wife (Fredi Washington) of a train porter who is frequently absent from home. Calloway and his Orchestra perform "Zaz-zuh-zaz" and "The Lady with the Fan" at the Cotton Club in Harlem.