Miles Ahead (2016)

MILES AHEAD, inspired by events in his life, is a wildly entertaining, impressionistic, no-holds barred portrait of one of 20th century music’s creative geniuses, Miles Davis, featuring a career defining performance by Oscar® nominee Don Cheadle in the title role. Working from a script he co-wrote with Steven Baigelman, Cheadle makes his bravura directorial debut.

In the midst of a dazzling and prolific career at the forefront of modern jazz innovation, Miles Davis (Cheadle) virtually disappears from public view for a period of five years in the late 1970s. Alone and holed up in his home, he is beset by chronic pain from a deteriorating hip, his musical voice stifled and numbed by drugs and pain medications, his mind haunted by unsettling ghosts from the past.

Born To Be Blue (2015)

Ethan Hawke lights up the screen as jazz legend Chet Baker, whose tumultuous life is thrillingly reimagined with wit, verve, and style to burn. In the 1950s, Baker was one of the most famous trumpeters in the world, renowned as both a pioneer of the West Coast jazz scene and an icon of cool. By the 1960s, he was all but washed up, his career and personal life in shambles due to years of heroin addiction. In his innovative anti-biopic, director Robert Budreau zeroes in on Baker’s life at a key moment in the 1960s, just as the musician attempts to stage a hard-fought comeback, spurred in part by a passionate romance with a new flame (Carmen Ejogo). 

Mavis (2015)

Dir: Jessica Edwards

United States / 2015 / 81mins

Mavis! is the first feature documentary on gospel/soul music legend and civil rights icon Mavis Staples and her family group, The Staple Singers. From the freedom songs of the ’60s and hits like I’ll Take You There in the ’70s, to funked-up collaborations with Prince and her recent albums with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Mavis has stayed true to her roots, kept her family close, and inspired millions along the way.

Featuring powerful live performances, rare archival footage, and conversations with friends and contemporaries including Bob Dylan, Prince, Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm, Jeff Tweedy, Chuck D, and more, MAVIS! reveals the struggles, successes, and intimate stories of her journey. At 75, she's making the most vital music of her career, winning Grammy awards, and reaching a new generation of fans. Her message of love and equality is needed now more than ever.

Finding Fela (Alex Gibney, 2014)

 

Finding Fela tells the story of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s life, his music, his social and political importance. He created a new musical movement, Afrobeat, using that forum to express his revolutionary political opinions against the dictatorial Nigerian government of the 1970s and 1980s. His influence helped bring a change towards democracy in Nigeria and promoted Pan Africanist politics to the world. The power and potency of Fela’s message is completely current today and is expressed in the political movements of oppressed people, embracing Fela’s music and message in their struggle for freedom. Finding Fela was directed by the Academy Award winning director, Alex Gibney.

20 Feet from Stardom (2013)

2014 Academy Awards Winner - BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

  

Millions know their voices, but no one knows their names. In his compelling new film TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM, award-winning director Morgan Neville shines a spotlight on the untold true story of the backup singers behind some of the greatest musical legends of the 21st century. Triumphant and heartbreaking in equal measure, the film is both a tribute to the unsung voices who brought shape and style to popular music and a reflection on the conflicts, sacrifices and rewards of a career spent harmonizing with others.   

[Doc] Muscle Shoals (Greg 'Freddy' Camalier, 2013)

 Located alongside the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama is the unlikely breeding ground for some of America's most creative and defiant music. Under the spiritual influence of the "Singing River," as Native Americans called it, the music of Muscle Shoals has helped create some of the most important and resonant songs of all time. At its heart is Rick Hall who founded FAME Studios.

Overcoming crushing poverty and staggering tragedies, Hall brought black and white together in Alabama's cauldron of racial hostility to create music for the generations. He is responsible for creating the "Muscle Shoals sound" and The Swampers, the house band at FAME that eventually left to start their own successful studio, known as Muscle Shoals Sound. Greg Allman, Bono, Clarence Carter, Mick Jagger, Etta James, Alicia Keys, Keith Richards, Percy Sledge and others bear witness to Muscle Shoals' magnetism, mystery and why it remains influential today. -

Mirror To The Soul (2012)

  Mirror To The Soul from Soul Jazz Records on Vimeo.

Mirror to the Soul is a new 2-hour documentary film about the Caribbean, which is made up entirely of footage from British Pathénewsreels (short news pieces of two or three minutes in length) thatwere filmed during the period 1922-1970. The film presents many aspects of Caribbean life – from bananaplantations to Voodoo ceremonies, Calypsonians to revolutionaries.

As well as an insight into aspects of West Indian life, the film alsoallows us to see how a private British film company presented a constructed Caribbean identity to the outside world. Consequently the film tells us as much about British society and its own identity and values – especially in regard to attitudes towards its then colonies – as it does those of the Caribbean itself.

Chico & Rita (2010)

Chico and Rita (Chico & Rita) is a Spanish animated feature-length film with Spanish and English languages directed by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal. The story of Chico and Rita is set against backdrops of Havana, New York City, Las Vegas, Hollywood and Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The film was produced by Fernando Trueba Producciones, Estudio Mariscal and Magic Light Pictures. The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film for the 84th Academy Awards (the first time that a Spanish full-length animated film is nominated) and has won in Spain the 2012 Goya Award for best animated film.

A gifted songwriter and beautiful singer chase their dreams – and each other – from Havana to New York and Las Vegas. Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and romantic desire unite them, but their journey – in the tradition of the Latin ballad, the bolero – brings heartache and torment.

[Film] Charles Bradley: Soul of America (2011)

Starting off on his 62nd birthday, Charles Bradley: Soul of America follows the extraordinary journey of singer Charles Bradley during the electrifying and transformative months leading up to the release of his debut album "No Time for Dreaming."  Despite being abandoned as a child, a period of homelessness, the devastating loss of his brother and constant poverty, Charles never gave up on his life long dream to be a professional singer. With the help of producer and Grammy-winner Gabriel Roth (Daptone Records) and musician Tommy Brenneck, Charles moved away from the James Brown covers he'd been performing for nearly half a century and focused on finding his own unique voice. Earning himself an opening spot on tour for Sharon Jones, the biggest artist in the Daptone stable, Charles delivered the most impassioned performances of his life...

[Jazz on Film] Sounds and Silence - Peter Guyer and Norbert Wiedmer, 2009

«sounds and silence» is a musical road movie about the passionate career of a man obsessed with music.

On the way through a world of sounds and noise – with Manfred Eicher, the oustanding discoverer and mediator of contemporary music and founder of the music label ECM. On this journey we are meeting musicians and composers, but also people and places which are connected with him and with each other. We are encountering stories, landscapes, cities, disputes and hugs, tranquillity, hectic pace, work, self-doubt, joy, passion.

A search for clues at concerts, in recording studios, in back rooms, at waysides with the musicians Arvo Pärt, Eleni Karaindrou, Dino Saluzzi, Anouar Brahem, Gianluigi Trovesi, Marilyn Mazur, Nik Bärtsch, Kim Kashkashian, Jan Garbarek and many others. A sensual, impressive, meditative road movie which accomplishes the extraordinary : to catch the magic of music.

[Jazz on Film] - Begone Dull Care (1949)

Begone Dull Care (1949) is a visual music animated film directed by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart. Using drawn on film animation, McLaren and Lambart paint and scratch directly onto film stock to create a visual representation of Oscar Peterson's jazz music. The film is produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

" Begone Dull Care is one of the great classics not only of animation but also of jazz on film. This 1949 short captures with joy and remarkable precision the spirit of the jazz music performed by the Oscar Peterson Trio. Director-animators Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart applied colours directly to the clear film with paint brushes of various sizes, stencil brushes, sprayers, crumpled paper and different textured fabrics.

As an example of film-jazz fusion, Begone Dull Care has captivated writers expert in both genres. In an interview about his 2000 book Jazz et Cinema, author Gilles Moullic says, "the most beautiful short on jazz is truly McLaren's Begone Dull Care"…. In it, McLaren understands very well that jazz-cinema is whatever 'happens' on screen. He worked a lot on a form of movement which is drawn out over the entire duration of the piece. There are flashes, breaks and splits in the drawing as well as, simultaneously, a continuous rhythm, a necessary pulse.” This National Film Board of Canada production won seven international awards, including prizes from the Venice and Berlin film festivals, and, more than 50 years after its creation, still appears on some critics Top 10 lists.

Begone Dull Care is one of 60 films directed and animated by Norman McLaren during his carreer at the National Film Board of Canada [AVTrust] "

Jazz on Film: "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957)

THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
USA 1957 • 93 mins • Directed by Alexander Mackendrick

Great film about New York ‘s underbelly. The sound track and the film features Chico Hamilton and his group with Jim Hall (gtr) ghosting for Martin Milner, the jazz musician being framed by Burt Lancaster. Conte Candoli (tpt) and Frank Rosolino (tbn) are briefly featured with Chico Hamilton. With Carson Smith, Paul Horn and Fred Katz.

Paris Blues (1961) trailer

Paris Blues (Martin Ritt, 1961)

Paris Blues (1961) is an American feature film filmed on location in Paris, starring Sidney Poitier as expatriate jazz musician Eddie Cook, and Paul Newman as trombone-playing Ram Bowen. The two men romance two vacationing American tourists, Connie Lampson (Diahann Carroll) and Lillian Corning (Joanne Woodward). The film also features Louis Armstrong and jazz pianist Aaron Bridgers, was produced by Sam Shaw, directed by Martin Ritt from a screenplay by Walter Bernstein, and with cinematography by Christian Matras. Paris Blues was released in the U. S. on September 27, 1961.
The film's soundrack was written by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington.

(Text from Wikipedia)

Paris Blues @ IMDB - AMG entry

Bird (Clint Eastwood, 1988)

"Do you want a husband or a musician?" a mental-hospital official asks Charlie Parker's common-law wife, Chan, as they debate whether the fragile jazzman should get shock treatment. "They do not separate!" she insists. In this sensitive, sophisticated labor of love directed by Clint Eastwood--yes, Clint Eastwood--all the tangled wires that fired Parker's creativity get a careful examination. Unfairly dismissed by some jazz fans as just another doomed-junkie story, Bird is blunt about its subject's catastrophic heroin habit (when he died at age 34, the doctor who pronounced him dead guessed that Parker was about 65). But it's just one piece of the puzzle, along with Bird's prescient artistry; his keen intelligence; his mercurial emotions; his struggles with racism, finances, and the cops; and his love for challenging women, chief among them the free-spirited Chan (a snappy, sizzling Diane Venora). In the center of Bird stands Forest Whitaker, giving a towering, multilayered performance, breaking your heart but never losing his dignity. Best of all, this is one jazz movie that truly glorifies its music--Parker's own sax solos, dropped into modern accompaniment through the magic of technology, blaze in long takes at Paris theaters, Southern barn dances, Kansas City cutting contests, and Manhattan nightclubs. The movie makes a case for Parker as a unique artist who could not--or would not--create a better world for himself.

Charlie "Yardbird" Parker had been a hero of Clint Eastwood's since childhood, and Eastwood, having been disappointed in such jazz biopics as Young Man with a Horn, really wanted to make a true jazz fan's movie about the music. He cast Forest Whitaker as Parker, the legendary alto sax player, and Diane Venora as Chan, Parker's wife. The film shows how Parker, a genius who changed the face of modern music, was hampered and eventually destroyed by his appetite for women, food, and drugs. The two leads do a great job giving a recognizable human face to the characters' complex relationship. With wit and warmth, Bird tells the story in direct and honest terms, avoiding all sentimentality. Eastwood's love of Parker's music comes across in the tremendous care that he and composer Lennie Niehaus took with reconstructing it, using Parker's original solos. Eastwood and cinematographer Jack N. Green also patterned the dark, moody look of the film after old photos of musicians who used to appear in jazz magazines. Music lovers will be thrilled with the result, and movie lovers will find plenty to engage them in this moving tale of a great man battling his demons.

Baltimore City Paper -- October 24, 2000

(The Hardbop Page)

"Bird" @ IMDB

Films: Round Midnight (Bertrand Tavernier, 1986)

A French music lover befriends a once-great American jazz artist and attempts to save him from self-destruction in this moody drama. Saxophonist Dexter Gordon portrays Dale Turner, a fictional musician inspired by a number of famed jazz figures, including Bud Powell and Lester Young. Largely forgotten in his home country, Turner has moved to Paris in search of a more appreciative audience. He finds it in the form of Francis Borler (Francois Cluzet), a bebop aficionado who befriends the expatriate player. Borler soon becomes familiar with Turner's darker side, including his struggles with alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression. Fearing for the musician's life, the fan becomes his caretaker, an arrangement that leads to a brief improvement in Turner's health and fortunes but places great emotional strain upon them both. Director Bertrand Tavernier pays great attention to the visual and aural details of the jazz world, with outstanding musical supervision provided by Herbie Hancock. 'Round Midnight's greatest asset, however, is Gordon's Academy Award-nominated performance, informed by his own life experiences. His naturally fascinating presence combines with the film's obvious love of the music and its milieu to provide what many have hailed as one of the more authentic and affectionate presentations of the jazz world on the silver screen.

(Κείμενο από All Movie Guide)

Φιλμογραφία Bertrand Tavernier - imdb

Σύντομο βιογραφικό και δισκογραφία Dexter Gordon - AMG

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