Jazzimation

A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.

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 collectively made filmic opera in 35 parts. The Black and predominantly queer art collective, an evolving line up of poets and artists from across the world, abstracts and reimagines opera in any traditional conception. Set to hip-hop, blues, noise, R&B and electronica, the piece uses the voice (chanting, singing, screaming; written by poet and activist Dawn Lundy Martin) as its primary tool, verbalising centuries of alienation, vulnerability and protest in the global African diaspora through its disruptive libretto.

In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.

An egotistical saxophone player and a young singer meet on V-J Day and embark upon a strained and rocky romance, even as their careers begin a long uphill climb.

Borrowing its title from a treatise by Aristotle, the latest film by Makino Takashi is an abstract work that finds its drive in the clash between light and darkness. Entirely composed of superimposed images of Tokyo’s landscape and water sites, the film takes its rhythm from the cycles of repetition that are the pillars of life and civilisation. As light emerges from the chaos, Jim O’Rourke’s ambient drone sets the tone for what is to come.

The Sonny Sharrock Band live in Prague as part of the Knitting Factory Festival Tour of Europe 1990.

Musical performers put on a show in a pawn shop to convince a man to give them the money they need to buy back their instruments.

The Life & Times of Bobby Keys ... decades-long Sax player with The Rolling Stones, best friend to Keith Richards, and session player with John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Delaney & Bonnie, George Harrison, Dr. John, Joe Cocker, Harry Nilsson, Ian McLagan, Keith Moon, Etta James, Ronnie Wood, Sheryl Crow, Ringo Starr, Joe Ely, Warren Zevon, Billy Preston, Donovan, Marvin Gaye, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, John Hiatt, Yoko Ono and B.B. King.

Twenty years after Claude Nougaro's death, numerous artists came together to participate in a grand tribute concert in Toulouse, the city he sang about so beautifully. Under the direction of Yvan Cujious and Yvan Cassar, conducting the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, this event brought together Bénabar, Nolwenn Leroy, BigFlo et Oli, Cali, Ben l'oncle Soul, Jean-Pierre Mader, Anne Sila, Natalie Dessay, Cats on Trees, and others, in front of thousands of nostalgic spectators. Recorded on September 8, 2024, at the Place du Capitole in Toulouse, Occitanie.

Rainer Kohlberger’s abstract film was created entirely without a camera. Through digital algorithms, he precisely arranged a rhythm of light and shadow that pulsates off the screen into our physical space with blinding intensity. The presence of light is almost felt as we are sucked into the image to become its ghostly accomplice. As we leave the theatre, the optical vibrations continue to haunt us.

Inside the Blue Note nightclub one night in 1959 Paris, an aged, ailing jazzman coaxes an eloquent wail from his tenor sax. Outside, a young Parisian too broke to buy a glass of wine strains to hear those notes. Soon they will form a friendship that sparks a final burst of genius.

A categorical accumulation of abstract patterns. Lines, colours and sounds obey an impenetrable logic. A quiet film that dares to be resolutely experimental. Chaotic equations by the Chinese mathematician Wang Lin are tackled by an analogue computer, a small battery of surplus high-frequency oscillators and Joost Rekveld.

Captured in state-of-the-art High Definition and mastered in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, The New Orleans Concert ignites a massive celebration of Big Easy music past and present - redolent in jazz, rollicking piano renditions, classic rhythm and blues, contemporary funk and rock & roll, all as steamy as a sweltering Delta summer's evening. New Orleans' legends, including Allen Toussaint, The Neville Brothers, and legendary drummer Earl Palmer, are joined by Steve Jordan, Bonnie Raitt, Keith Richards and Joss Stone to create this extraordinary musical extravaganza, reminding the world once again that New Orleans is far more than just one nation's treasure.

In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.