Blue Note - A Story of Modern Jazz

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.

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.

Motian In Motion is a documentary film about iconic jazz drummer Paul Motian, with rare footage of Paul playing and recording at the world renowned Village Vanguard, Birdland and other venues.

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.

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

After his long-time girlfriend dumps him, a thirty-year-old record store owner seeks to understand why he is unlucky in love while recounting his "top five breakups of all time".

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.

A jazzy film in which the spectator is forced to look with the ears and listen with the eyes. An abstract film drawn directly on the computer.

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.

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.

Toronto is regarded as the third largest jazz centre in North America. This film features a cross-section of jazz bands of that city: the Lenny Breau Trio, the Don Thompson Quintet and the Alf Jones Quartet. Their styles show creative self-expression, hard work, and improvisation.