Jazz film series in Los Angeles

[Adam]

Just want to give denizens of Southern California a early heads up. The Silent movie Theatre now shows more than silent movies, and will be having a jazz film series in Jan-February. They are showing a bit more mainstream - "Jazz on a Summer's Day," "Straight, no Chaser," etc., At Filmforum, which I program, I will be screening films on the more avant side. Thus far it looks like I will screen Ron Mann's Imagine the Sound" on Sunday February 10, which features Cecil Taylor, Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, and Archie Shepp. Still figuring out another for later in February.

I've also worked with the folks at the Silent Movie Theatre to arrange a co-presented screening of Shirley Clarke's film "Ornette: Made in America" which should be at the SMT on February 7.

More details to come.

www.lafilmforum.org

www.silentmovietheatre.com

[ValerieB]

thanks so much, Adam. will definitely be watching out for more info.

[Adam]

Here are more details for January:

http://www.silentmovietheatre.com/calendar/thursday.html

These screenings are at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles 90036.

There will be more in February.

Jazz on Film: Capturing Creation / Music Thursdays in January at 8pm

“When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone, in the air, you can never capture it again.”—Eric Dolphy

Jazz and motion pictures are two of our youngest art forms. Both developed at the beginning of the 20th century, and have seen rapid innovation and evolution in their technological, stylistic and expressive potential. While jazz remains America’s most celebrated cultural product, film is our most popular medium. As long as people have been making music, filmmakers have sought to record the live experience—to prevent the music from vanishing into the ether, as Dolphy describes. The best jazz films, while not quite containing the music’s ephemeral power, can sharpen our senses, engaging our eyes and our ears. In a sense, all of these movies are documentaries, capturing sound at the moment of its birth. Our series takes a broad cross-section of the genre, from the 40s big band swing of Stormy Weather to the free jazz of Ornette Coleman. Come see and hear some of the best American artists of our recent past, bigger than life, and high on the act of creation.

1/3 @ 8pm / SERIES: Jazz on film

Sun Ra: Space in the Place

Based on Sun Ra’s free jazz masterpiece of the same name, Space is the Place is an appropriately chaotic brew of elements: social commentary, exploitation, science fiction, concert film, and, best of all, a journey to "true perception." Playing himself, Ra intergalactically travels back in time to the 1940s to compete in a card game with the pimpadelic Overseer to determine the fate of the Black race. From then on, Ra is dodging everyone from The Overseer to white secret service agents who have it out for him, all the while maintaining his signature calm. Luckily, Ra's band, The Arkestra, is in tow to back him up, and provide musical vibes all along the way. Truly bizarre and captivating at the same time, with colors that rival a Powell & Pressburger film, Space is the Place takes you on a cosmic journey into not only Sun Ra's mind, but maybe your own.

Presented by Arthur Magazine.

Dir: John Coney, 1974, 35mm, 85 min.

Tickets - $10

1/10 @ 8pm / SERIES: Jazz on film

Jazz on a Summer's Day

Shot in time-defyingly, unfaded Kodachrome, Jazz on a Summer’s Day is one of the best examples of how documentaries can become time machines. Fashion photographer Bert Stern—who captured the justly iconographic image of the coquettishly sunglassed Sue Lyon that graces the poster for Kubrick’s Lolita—filmed at the Newport Jazz Festival for three glorious days, and chose not to limit his encompassing vision to the acts on stage. He sees everything that can conjure a sunny, happy day for cool cats. His camera-eye wanders blissfully over to the audience (intently listening with eyes closed behind Ray-Ban sunglasses, or bopping in place in popping polka dots), and even occasionally all the way out of the concert hall. Jazz infects all of Newport Beach: ships at sea, beer-fisted college girls dancing on rooftops, a skilled cellist practicing in his room while smoking a cigarette. And did I forget to mention the incredible performances inspiring all this joy? How about a sizzlingly hot Anita O’Day, peak-era Thelonious Monk, Mahalia Jackson, Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, Sonny Stitt, Chico Hamilton, Dinah Washington, and many, many more.

Dirs: Bert Stern & Aram Avakian, 1960, 35mm, 85 min.

Tickets - $10

1/17 @ 8pm / SERIES: Jazz on film

Stormy Weather

Due to racial segregation typical of the era, the 1940s featured very little in the way of starring vehicles for black performers, and 20th Century Fox's Stormy Weather is a rare major studio glimpse into jazz nightlife. The film, which takes its title from the song of the same name, is loosely based on the life of Bill "Bojangles" Johnson, the pioneering tap dancer who made the miracle crossover into entertaining white America in the 1930s. The plot is threadbare -- Johnson engages in a tempestuous romance with singer Lena Horne -- but gloriously taking up the bulk of the screen time are fourteen classic song-and-dance routines, including Fats Waller presenting "Ain't Misbehavin'," an on-fire Cab Calloway doing "The Jumpin' Jive," Lena Horne deftly crooning the title song, and the Nicholas Brothers tearing up the dance floor with an aerobatic routine guaranteed to leave you reeling.

Dir: Andrew L. Stone, 1943, 35mm, 78 min.

Tickets - $10

1/24 @ 8pm / SERIES: Jazz on film

Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser

Hitting the “wrong” notes never felt more right than when Thelonious Monk hit them at his piano. This documentary, made over a twenty-year period, unearths reels of previously lost Monk footage that co-producer Bruce Ricker has called “the Dead Sea Scrolls of Jazz.” Off-the-cuff interviews with Monk’s inner circle give insight into the pianist’s closeted struggle with mental illness in the 1960s, but the film, under the directorial guidance of seasoned documentarian Charlotte Zwerin (Gimme Shelter), is careful to distinguish the “man who suffers from the mind which creates.” Straight, No Chaser gets at the heart of Monk’s distinctive style -- the "dissonant harmonies and angular twists" set against the backdrop of bebop -- and gives us Monk both in the studio and on tour, stabbing out the beautiful skewed melodies and sparse solos which made him the one of the celebrated founders of modern jazz.

Dir: Charlotte Zwerin, 1988, 35mm, 90 min.

Tickets - $10

1/31 @ 8pm / SERIES: Jazz on film

Mingus

In 1968, documentarian Thomas Reichman found legendary bass player Charlie Mingus at a key moment in the unraveling of his pride: his unfair eviction by the city of New York from the rat-hole studio where he planned to build a jazz school. What does this great musician do in his time of crisis? As if in the heat of the moment of a raging bass solo, he lays down the groove and riffs on it: he smokes his briar, says some pretty smart and original things to the camera about jazz, women, parenthood, politics, race, family and friendship. He shows us an example of the same cheap rifle that assassinated President Kennedy, and, with a smile, uses the gun to blow a hole in the wall of his now-ex-studio, an act motivated by a short temper almost as legendary as his bass playing. Reichman interweaves stunning live performances of "All The Things You Are" and "Take The 'A' Train" to give us a searing portrait of a turbulent artist in even more turbulent times.

Dir: Thomas Reichman, 1968, 35mm, 58 min.

shown with...

The Universal Mind of Bill Evans

In a 1966 television interview with the erudite Steve Allen, the normally shy and soft-spoken influential pianst Bill Evans sits at his instrument and, over the course of a candid conversation, unleashes a torrent of sharp and informative thoughts on the meaning of jazz, and the nature of music improvisation.

Dir: Louis Carvell, 1966, 35mm, 45 min.

Tickets - $10

In line for February:

Feb. 7 - ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA by Shirley Clarke

Co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum

[Johnny E]

Sweet! Sometime I wish I lived in LA.

[Adam]

Sweet! Sometime I wish I lived in LA.

Sometimes I wish I lived in Seattle. Although I think Portland might even be better...

Filmforum in LA is screening Ron Mann's IMAGINE THE SOUND on February 10, which features Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Paul Bley, Bill Dixon.

BUT it's coming to me from Northwest Film Center in Portland, where it is screening in late January (Jan 31 to be precise).

Actually, the NW Film Center is having a great Music Film Series, of which it is part, as is ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA, and so is the film I co-produced, THE OLD WEIRD AMERICA: HARRY SMITH'S ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC. Several other films with jazz concerns as well, So for those in the Northwest, check this out!

http://www.nwfilm.org/nowshowing/

[Adam]

JAZZ FILM "IMAGINE THE SOUND"

AT LOS ANGELES FILMFORUM ON FEBRUARY 10, 2008

January 18, 2008 –– Los Angeles, CA – Showcasing the work of jazz musicians Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Paul Bley, and Bill Dixon, the Los Angeles Filmforum, the city’s longest running experimental screening series, presents Imagine the Sound, a documentary by Ron Mann, on February 10 at 7:00 pm at the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.

Sunday, February 10, 2008, 7:00pm

Los Angeles Filmforum, Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Blvd, at Las Palmas

Los Angeles CA 90028

www.lafilmforum.org

For reservations, email the name & number in your party to lafilmforum@yahoo.com.

$9 general; $6 students/seniors

IMAGINE THE SOUND (1981, color, 16mm/35mm screening from DVCam, 71 min)

Featuring Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Paul Bley, and Bill Dixon

Filmforum commences an intermittent series of documentaries focusing on avant-garde and free jazz,

Personnel: Cecil Taylor: piano; Paul Bley: piano; Archie Shepp: tenor and soprano saxophones, vocals; Kenny Werner: piano; Santo di Briano: bass; John Betch: drums; Bill Dixon: trumpet; Art Davis: bass; Freddie Waits: drums.

The first feature documentary by Ron Mann (GRASS, COMICBOOK CONFIDENTIAL) is an eloquent tribute to a group of highly celebrated artists that helped forge the avant-garde jazz of the 1960s. Critic and film historian Jonathan Rosenbaum has said IMAGINE THE SOUND “may be the best documentary on free jazz that we have.”

The film features articulate interviews and dramatic performances by pianists Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley, tenor saxophone Archie Shepp, and trumpet player Bill Dixon.

Not since Scorsese’s The Last Waltz has a music documentary been so thorough and compatible with its subject. Alongside the dynamic performances, the film captures the diverse history and politicized roots of this unique musical genre.

REVIEW: But its true subject is the innovative, free jazz work done in the Sixties, and by extension the determination of these artists to break down the musical barriers that characterized that decade. One could point to any number of reasons why the film works so well, from Robert Fresco's exquisite cinematography (prior to IMAGINE THE SOUND, music documentaries were shot entirely on the fly, and looked like it), to the charm of its subject. The film's real genius, though, probably resides above all in its structure and editing. Mann and his collaborators have given us a near perfect précis on how and why free jazz developed, and the context from which it emerged, but they've also been wise enough to foreground the music without either relying on it too heavily or, worse, cutting it short. -- Steve Gravestock

Production Notes: 71 minutes. 1981/2007. Digitally restored from its original 1981 release format in 16mm, mono (optical) sound to HD(High Definition), 5.1 stereo; the sound was remixed on ProTools from the original 35mm stereo recorded master and 16mm magnetic dialogue tracks.

Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization that screens non-commercial experimental and avant-garde films and video art, documentaries, and animation. Filmforum began in Pasadena, and 2008 is the start of its 32nd year. It has long included jazz films in its screening series.

[Kalo]

The Silent Movie Theater breaks the sound barrier? That's like when Dylan went electric. Are there mimes protesting in the streets, creating imaginary havoc?

[Adam]

Actually, every film, even the sound ones, are played with the sound turned off. :-)

Reminder:

Filmforum co-presents with Cinefamily "Ornette: Made in America" (1985, 85 min) by Shirley Clarke. on Thursday February 7, 8:00 pm.

Part of CineFamily’s Jazz on Film: Capturing Creation series. Shirley Clarke was one of the key figures of the American independent film movement, whose films The Connection (1961) and The Cool World (1963) both had strong jazz elements. Her final film Ornette: Made in America (1985) is a documentary portrait of Ornette Coleman’s life, upbringing in Fort Worth, and return to that city with two different sets of work in 1984.

Los Angeles Filmforum, copresented with Cinefamily, at the Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave (South of Melrose) Thursday Feb 7, 2008, 8:00 pm. Park at Fairfax High School across the street. General admission $10. www.lafilmforum.org or www.silentmovietheatre.com

Feb 9, 2008 issue:

----------------------

Filmforum presents "Imagine the Sound" by Ron Mann on Sunday February 10, 7:00 pm.

Filmforum commences an intermittent series of documentaries focusing on avant-garde and free jazz, with the Los Angeles appearance of the new revival of Ron Mann’s vital film Imagine the Sound (1981/2007). A marvelous film as thoroughly designed as The Last Waltz, for jazz fans and documentary fans, it digs deep into the side of improvised music not yet touched by Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis. Featuring Cecil Taylor, Paul Bley, Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp.

Los Angeles Filmforum, at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd, at Las Palmas. Sunday Feb 10, 2008. 7:00 pm. General admission $9, students/seniors $6, free for Filmforum members, cash and check only. www.lafilmforum.org. The Egyptian Theatre has a validation stamp for the Hollywood & Highland complex. Park 4 hours for $2 with validation.

[Adam]

2/21 @ 8pm / SERIES: Jazz on film

Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together

Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together is a portrait of three great New Orleans pianists and how they influenced one another's music. The three keyboard artists – Tuts Washington, Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint -- are featured playing together for the first time in a rehearsal for a joint concert. The rehearsal turned out to be the only time the three ever played together, because Professor Longhair died two days before the scheduled performance. The video documentary takes viewers through the very personal and sacred New Orleans tradition of a jazz wake and funeral procession for Professor Longhair, which was taped at the encouragement of his widow, Alice. Also included is the previously planned concert with Toussaint and Washington, who turned the event into a tribute to Fess.

Dir: Stevenson Palfi, 1982, Video, 76 min.

Tickets - $10

2/28 @ 8pm / SERIES: Jazz on film

Passing Through

Lauded by critics as the best jazz film ever made, Passing Through is a vivid and lyrical meditation on the indelible role of music in the struggle for civil rights. With the vital spontaneity and aesthetic consideration of a masterful jazz composition, the film follows Warmack, a promising young musician, on a spiritual quest toward inspiration and cultural excavation. Warmack's relationship with his grandfather is the heart of Passing Through-- Poppa Harris, a musician himself, provides Warmack with the sort of guidance that leads the film's central journey to its poignant, essential message. Director Larry Clark never released this film commercially-- in his words, it was made for the revolution. Upon its reemergence, Passing Through’s remarkable rarity and quality prompted several festivals to screen it as a special event, including Locarno and Cannes, and its inclusion in this series is a truly exciting chance for us to bring you as close to a lost classic as you’ll find in the film world.

Presented by Arthur Magazine.

Dir: Larry Clark, 1977, 35mm, 105 min.

Tickets - $10

www.silentmovietheatre.com

Edited February 24, 2008 by Adam