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 Texas and his subsequent emergence as an American cultural pioneer and world-class composer and performer. Among those who contribute to the film are William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Buckminster Fuller, Don Cherry, Yoko Ono, Charlie Haden, Robert Palmer, Jayne Cortez, and John Rockwell.
Up Next in Free Jazz
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Milford Graves Full Mantis
Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
Starring Milford GravesThis 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...
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Fire Music
Directed by Tom Surgal • 2021 • United States
Starring John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun RaAlthough 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...
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Promises: Through Congress
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...
