Motian in Motion

Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.

San Francisco's North Beach in the 50's - A mix of jazz, poetry and art - The Beach recreates the atmosphere that prevailed through first-hand accounts from the actual "players" along with photographs and artwork from that vibrant time.

A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.

Brilliantly mixing animated sequences and archival footage, Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre paints a touching portrait of virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson.

Thursday 27th of October 2016 – Teatro Espace, Turin. Mulatu Astatke is a musician, composer, arranger and Ethiopia’s cultural ambassador. He’s known as the godfather of ethiojazz, a unique blend of jazz, traditional Ethiopian music, latin, caribbean reggae and afrofunk. Born in 1943 in Jimma, Mulatu studied music not only in Ethiopia but also in UK and USA. In 2005 he contributed to the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch’s film “Broken Flowers”, reaching a new public worldwide.

A documentary on Dizzy Gillespie's landmark visit to Cuba and his performance at the Fifth International Jazz Festival in Havana, Cuba. Filmed in 1985 with Arturo Sandoval and Sayyd Abdul Al Khabyyr.

This feature documentary offers a glimpse of contemporary Cuba’s rich musical culture through the experiences of renowned Canadian soprano sax player and flautist Jane Bunnett. Jane and her husband, trumpeter Larry Cramer, are surrounded by the charm of Old Havana as they connect with some of the city's finest musicians—like singers Bobby Carcasses and Amado Dedeu —for a recording session. Bunnett and Cramer then venture to small towns like Cienfuegos and Camaguey, where they hook up with local musicians and visit music schools. Global music fans will be captivated by the performances of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, a celebrated Afro-Cuban rumba group, and Desandann, a 10-member a cappella choir that sings in Haitian Creole.

A documentary about Cairo Jazz Festival's Amr Salah and his struggle every year to bring people and arts together in a country where 70% of people are under 30 and the Officials do not care about culture too much.

"It must schwing!" was the motto of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, two German Jewish immigrants who in 1939 set up Blue Note Records, the jazz label that was home to such greats as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins. Blue Note, the most successful movie ever made about jazz, is a testimony to the passion and vision of these two men and certainly swings like the propulsive sounds that made their label so famous.

Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen - through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things - that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers - that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."