Directed by Moshé Mizrahi • 1970 • France
Starring Bernadette Lafont, Michel Duchaussoy, Serge Marquand

A long-lost gem of New Wave–inspired French cinema, LES STANCES À SOPHIE (“Sophie’s Ways”) features an exhilarating avant-garde jazz soundtrack by the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago that ra...

Directed by John Coney • 1974 • United States
Starring Sun Ra, Barbara Deloney, Raymond Johnson

Avant-jazz mystic Sun Ra brought his pioneering Afrofuturist vision to the screen with this film version of his concept album. It’s a wild, kaleidoscopic whirl of science fiction, sharp social comment...

Directed by Robert Mugge • 1980 • United States
Starring Sun Ra, June Tyson, Danny Thompson

Years ahead of his time, composer, keyboardist, bandleader, poet, and philosopher Sun Ra coupled images of outer space with those of ancient Egypt, acoustic instruments with electronic ones, and modern Am...

Directed by Ron Mann • 1981 • Canada

The first feature documentary by counterculture chronicler Ron Mann is an eloquent tribute to a group of highly celebrated artists who helped forge the once-controversial free jazz movement of the 1960s. Bringing together interviews with and performances by l...

Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1985 • United States
Starring Ornette Coleman

This freewheeling documentary captures Ornette Coleman’s evolution over three decades. Documentary footage, dramatic scenes, and some of the first music-video-style segments ever made chronicle his boyhood in segregated T...

Directed by Ebba Jahn • 1985 • West Germany
Starring John Zorn, David S. Ware, Rashied Ali

This essential document of New York’s avant-garde jazz scene in the 1980s is packed with thrilling performances by boundary-pushing musicians like Charles Gayle, William Parker, John Zorn, and Wayne Horvit...

Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
Starring Milford Graves

This portrait of renowned percussionist and founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz Milford Graves finds him exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. The film draws the viewer through th...

Directed by Tom Surgal • 2021 • United States
Starring John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra

Although the free-jazz movement of the 1960s and ’70s was met with heated controversy, its pioneers—brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane—are toda...

Directed by Trevor Tweeten • 2021 • United States

Sound and image meet in a mesmerizing, multisensory experience in this journey through Ethiopian American artist Julie Mehretu’s expansive painting “Congress,” which sets the artwork to the acclaimed album “Promises,” a collaboration between elec...

Directed by Edward Bland • 1959 • United States
Starring George Waller, Dorothea Horton, Melinda Dillon

Featuring music by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, this landmark semi-documentary explores—via a heated conversation between a group of Black and white jazz aficionados—the relationship between jazz ...

Directed by Stan Lathan • 1970 • United States

In this intimate portrait—produced for a segment of National Education Television's “Black Journal” television program—legendary jazz musician Alice Coltrane plays the harp and discusses her thoughts on music, spirituality, family, and the legacy of...

Directed by Ulysses Jenkins • 1983 • United States

A video companion to a twenty-four-hour group performance organized by Ulysses Jenkins, DREAM CITY collages live music, poetry, and dance into a pulsating kaleidoscope of color and sound. Frequent Jenkins collaborators Maren Hassinger, Senga Nen...