Tenor saxophonist Jimmy McGary was a major presence in the Cincinnati music scene from the 1950s until his death in the early ’90s. With music rooted in Bebop with a progressive slant, the Jazz legend was a session player for King Records and released his first album as a bandleader — The First Time (with a quartet that included pianist Pat Kelly) — in 1979. McGary’s spirit and legacy have lived on well after his passing and well beyond Cincinnati, as evidenced in this new documentary film.
Django Reinhardt, trois doigts de génie
The personal life and professional career of music superstar Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, universally known as Sting, who became passionate about music at a very early age and founded the trio The Police in 1977 with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, achieving an immediate success.
New York, 2010. Jeff Harris, a music journalist, sets out to uncover the truth about Francisco Tenório Júnior, a young Brazilian samba-jazz pianist who disappeared in Buenos Aires on March 18, 1976.
For three and a half centuries, from the same day that Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) applied his last brushstroke to the canvas, the enigma of “Las meninas, o La familia de Felipe IV” (1656) has not been deciphered. The secret story of a painting unveiled as if it was the resolution of a perfect crime.
An investigation into accusations of teenagers being sexually abused within the film industry.
A funny walk through the life story of Billy Wilder (1906-2002), a cinematic genius; a portrait of a filmmaker who never was a boring man, a superb mind who had ten commandments, of which the first nine were: “Thou shalt not bore.”
A captivating portrait of French actor Michel Piccoli, who has worked with the greatest filmmakers of his time and has built a dazzling career of remarkable merit and success, focusing on his work during the 1970s and his professional relationship with Claude Sautet, Romy Schneider, Marco Ferreri and Luis Buñuel.
Documentary about jazz great Chet Baker that intercuts footage from the 1950s, when he was part of West Coast Cool, and from his last years. We see the young Baker, he of the beautiful face, in California and in Italy, where he appeared in at least one movie and at least one jail cell (for drug possession). And, we see the aged Baker, detached, indifferent, his face a ruin. Includes interviews with his children and ex-wife, women companions, and musicians.
Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.
Going To California is a concert performance video by the British pop group Tears For Fears. Released in 1990, it is a recording of the band's show at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in May 1990 during their "Seeds Of Love" World Tour.
As Russian writer Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) thinks it is impossible that his novel Doctor Zhivago is published in the Soviet Union, because it supposedly shows a critical view of the October Revolution, he decides to smuggle several copies of the manuscript out of the country. It is first published in 1957 in Italia and the author receives the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, which has consequences.
An analysis of The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell's controversial novel, published in 2006, which dissects the ruthless mechanisms of the Shoah from the detached point of view of Maximilian Aue, a high-ranking Nazi officer.
An account of the life and work of Swiss painter, sculptor, architect and designer H. R. Giger (1940-2014), tormented father of creatures as fearsome as they are fascinating, inhabitants of nightmarish biomechanical worlds.
From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.
Honey Daniels dreams of making a name for herself as a hip-hop choreographer. When she's not busy hitting downtown clubs with her friends, she teaches dance classes at a nearby community center in Harlem, N.Y., as a way to keep kids off the streets. Honey thinks she's hit the jackpot when she meets a hotshot director casts her in one of his music videos. But, when he starts demanding sexual favors from her, Honey makes a decision that will change her life.
The personal and professional story of Ilona Staller, known as Cicciolina, is probably unique: she left communist Hungary and moved to Italy, where she found a fertile environment for a life dedicated to scandal.
A French documentary on Superman actor Christopher Reeve as told by his French voice dubbing actor, Pierre Arditi.
A portrait of the famous French actress Fanny Ardant, who has worked with great figures of cinema such as Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Michelangelo Antonioni, Sydney Pollack and, above all, François Truffaut (1932-84), with whom she had a sentimental relationship and whose death marked the rest of her life.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.