Gerry Weil: Una historia de jazz(2025)

Lost in NOLA(it)

A young student filmmaker in an attempt to shoot a documentary gets lost in New Orleans. Out of fear of making a mistake, he ends up making hundreds of mistakes.

Volver a Volver(es)

The Sykora family are only four people out of millions of Venezuelans that have recently escaped their collapsing country. They land in the Czech Republic, the country where Grandpa Jan was born, but also a place utterly strange to them. In a matter of months their savings have almost gone and job seeking becomes a nightmare. Again, the dream of just having a normal life starts to vanish. Will the family manage not to crumble along the way?

Saxophone Colossus(en)

Tenor saxophone master Sonny Rollins has long been hailed as one of the most important artists in jazz history, and still, today, he is viewed as the greatest living jazz improviser. In 1986, filmmaker Robert Mugge produced Saxophone Colossus, a feature-length portrait of Rollins, named after one of his most celebrated albums.

The Sound of Seeing(en)

Made on a wind-up Bolex camera, The Sound of Seeing announced the arrival of 21-year-old filmmaker Tony Williams. Based around a painter and a composer wandering the city (and beyond), the film meshes music and imagery to show the duo taking inspiration from their surroundings.

Django Reinhardt, trois doigts de génie(fr)

Stop for Bud(da)

Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."

Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin' Women(en)

This profile of storied trumpeter of jazz, Tiny Davis, and her cohort pianist-drummer, Ruby Lucas, is an amalgam of artifacts about the two women, accompanied with poetry by Cheryl Clarke.

Steve e il Duca(it)

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.

Let's Get Lost(en)

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.

10 Years of Indeleble(es)

This documentary tells the story behind "Indeleble", the album with which Los Mesoneros received four Latin Grammy nominations and toured many countries. "10 Años de Indeleble" features interviews, stories, and songs that had never seen the light of day, along with a live show in which Los Mesoneros perform, in order, the songs that were part of that first record.

El Father Plays Himself(es)

A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the Amazon jungle (La Fortaleza, Jorge Thielen Armand). He casts Father to play himself. What starts as an act of love and ambition — filmmaking to more deeply understand the self, and the other — spirals into a process which confronts Father’s struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son. EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF holds a steady lens to the way the act of cinema unearths, binds, heals and destroys.

The World of the Seekers(en)

While flying to the first stop on their latest tour, the four members of the Australian music group The Seekers recall in flashback the origins of the group and their rise to success.

Don't Fall in Love with Yourself(en)

A documentary about the life and music of Justin Pearson. An enigmatic underground musician and owner of Three One G records.

Andrea Motis, The Silent Trumpet(es)

This film by director Ramon Tort documents a unique moment in the life and career of Andrea Motis: the months preceding the recording of her first album in New York as well as what followed. A time filled with changes and emotions; from leaving her parents’ home for the first time and start living by herself to embarking in a world tour that would take her to places like Japan, United States, Asia and Europe. A crucial time in a young woman's life, who is about to make the big leap…, but is she interested in success or fame? Andrea is not a conventional artist. She lives in the moment, enjoying the small things in life, every day in the most simplest way possible… An entire magical process that can only be understood through her music.

Diana Krall | Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival(en)

track list: 1.Sometimes I Just Freak Out 2.All Or Nothing At All 3.Stop This World 4.The Girl In The Other Room 5.Abandoned Masquerade 6.I'm Coming Through 7.Temptation 8.East Of The Sun (And West Of The Moon) 9.Devil May Care 10.Black Crow 11.Narrow Daylight 12.Love Me Like A Man 13.Departure Bay 14.Narrow Daylight

Keith Jarrett Open Theatre East(en)

Recorded live at Open Theater East, Tokyo, Japan on July 25, 1993. Keith Jarrett piano - Gary Peacock bass - Jack De Johnette drums /// 1. In Your Own Sweet Way 2. Butch And Butch 3. Basin Street Blues 4. Solar 5. Ex-tension 6. If I Were A Bell 7. I Fall In Love Too Easily 8. Oleo 9. Bye Bye Blackbird 10. The Cure 11. I Thought About You

The Musicians' Green Book: An Enduring Legacy(en)

Stories and music of Black artists who relied on an underground travel guide to navigate the injustices of racial segregation while on the road. The Negro Travelers’ Green Book was a directory of lodgings, restaurants, and entertainment venues where African Americans were welcomed. Features performances and interviews with vocalists, musicians, activists, historians, and others.

Jazzia olohuoneessa - Bill Evans trio(en)

A film made in 1970 in the home of Finnish composer Ilkka Kussisto (whose two sons are famous violinists) when the Bill Evans Trio visited him for a private performance.

Una Fabula Muy Trillada: The Legacy Of Dermis Tatú(es)

Two decades ago, Venezuela's power trio Dermis Tatú released their only album, "La violó, la mató y la picó" ("Raped her, killed her and cut her"). The band was an offspring from the separation of Sentimiento Muerto, and was formed by Carlos "Cayayo" Troconis (voice and guitar), Héctor Castillo (bass) and Sebastián Araujo (drums). The record is still considered by many as the most influential in the Venezuelan rock scene. Twenty years later, Castillo and Araujo remember the stories behind the recording, as a group of the current generation of Venezuelan rockers, not only explain its influence and impact, but also play all the songs from the album, making them their own.

How It Breathes(en)

Elijah Jamal Balbed grew up in Washington DC in the midst of one of its most difficult eras, as its identity was being tested. As the city changed around him, his budding career as a musician exposed him to the people and music providing a voice and an outlet to the people of DC. Now tasked with preserving and sharing that tradition, Balbed reflects on balancing that responsibility with creating a musical identity of his own.