Jake Blues, just released from prison, puts his old band back together to save the Catholic home where he and his brother Elwood were raised.
An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.
A documentary on Dizzy Gillespie's landmark visit to Cuba and his performance at the Fifth International Jazz Festival in Havana, Cuba. Filmed in 1985 with Arturo Sandoval and Sayyd Abdul Al Khabyyr.
A tale of an inner city drug dealer who turns away from crime to pursue his passion, rap music.
A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.
Brilliantly mixing animated sequences and archival footage, Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre paints a touching portrait of virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson.
Shows children various reasons why they need to resist peer pressure, refuse drugs, and refuse to follow the crowd just to fit in
Ivanhoe Martin arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, looking for work and, after some initial struggles, lands a recording contract as a reggae singer. He records his first song, "The Harder They Come," but after a bitter dispute with a manipulative producer named Hilton, soon finds himself resorting to petty crime in order to pay the bills. He deals marijuana, kills some abusive cops and earns local folk hero status. Meanwhile, his record is topping the charts.
In 1978, a Kiss concert was an epoch-making event. For the three teen fans in Detroit Rock City getting tickets to the sold-out show becomes the focal point of their existence. They'll do anything for tickets -- compete in a strip club's amateur-night contest, take on religious protesters, even rob a convenience store!
In 1917, the First World War is raging. Julien is from Luxemburg, so instead of having to go to war he studies piano in Paris. One day his friend Jacques, also a musician and now a fighter pilot on the front, invites him to spend a few days in his family's empty house in Bray. The housekeeper, a beautiful stoic woman lets Julien in, but his friend is late and he is obliged to wait. In the meantime, he starts reminiscing of the pre-war days spent with his friend and Jacques' girlfriend Odile.
In 1999, on the occasion of the centenary of Ellington's birth, Franco Maresco commissioned Steve Lacy to perform ten songs by the Duke, which were recorded and filmed in Palermo. In 2024, twenty years after Lacy's death and fifty years after that of Ellington, that unpublished material re-emerges from the archive of the great Sicilian director and becomes a documentary.
Bizet's Carmen gets a modern adaptation. Seducting, provocating, sensual. All the ingredients for a perfect drama. With her charm, Karmen gets out of many situations.
The documentary film on the life and legacy of Rahsaan Roland Kirk – a one of a kind musician, personality, activist and windmill slayer who despite being blind, becoming paralyzed, and facing America’s racial injustices - did not relent.
Laosan, a young family man, spends all his time smoking opium. For his community, lost in the heart of the Laotian jungle, opium farming is the only way to survive. But opium is also the poison that puts men to sleep and kills their desires.
Call him the Duke of Denmark, as this is the second superb Ellington performance recorded in that country to be released in 2003 alone. It's also an appropriate follow-up to The Intimate Duke Ellington; whereas the latter showcases Ellington as a solo pianist and in small group settings, Live at the Tivoli Gardens features the Ellington Orchestra in all its splendor. It includes two approximately 70-minute sets recorded a few days apart in 1971, when the Duke was 72.
On Valentine's Day, 1993, Caveh Zahedi decided to ingest 5 grams (a very large dose) of hallucinogenic mushrooms. For the first time in his mushroom-taking history, he had an experience of "divine possession," in which he felt that a divine being took possession of his body and spoke through him, in a voice that was not his, and with knowledge that he himself did not possess. He later tried several times to repeat the experience. I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD is the documentary record of one such attempt.
This legendary performance by Van Morrison and The Caledonia Soul Orchestra was filmed at The Rainbow in London in July, 1973. Previously unissued, it stands as one of the greatest live shows by any band.
A feature- length documentary on the life and work of jazz musician and composer Krzysztof Komeda.
In this entertaining Puppetoon animated short film, a young boy, Jasper, gets trapped inside a pawnshop at midnight. All the musical instruments come to life and play jazz. A whooping wooden Indian chief self-animates as well, and goes on the warpath.
In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.