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 American musical genres (jazz, soul, gospel, blues, swing) with the sounds of Africa and the Caribbean. He also combined his music with dance, poetry, colorful costumes and backdrops, and pure theatricality and was among the first musicians to use electronic keyboards and portable synthesizers in public performance. For this definitive documentary, filmmaker Robert Mugge spent two years shooting Sun Ra and members of his jazz Arkestra, capturing thrilling performances, rehearsals, Sun Ra’s poetry and mythological pronouncements, and interviews with the band members at the home they shared in Philadelphia.
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...
