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 and race in America. Touching on the development of jazz as a distinctly African American art form born of Black struggle and the insidious co-option of Black culture by white people, THE CRY OF JAZZ proved explosively controversial both for its frank discussion of race and its bold proclamation that “jazz is dead.”
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Martha Clarke Light & Dark: A Dancer’...
Directed by Joyce Chopra • 1980 • United States
Starring Félix Blaska, Martha Clarke, Philip GrausmanJoyce Chopra traces one year in the artistic evolution of celebrated choreographer Martha Clarke, offering an intimate window into Clarke’s creative process as she sets out to redefine the bound...
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Songs for Drella
Directed by Ed Lachman • 1990 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Lou Reed, John CaleNewly restored, this elegiac concert documentary captures the extraordinary 1990 reunion of estranged Velvet Underground bandmates Lou Reed and John Cale. The occasion for this landmark event was a live pe...
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Black Panthers
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1970 • United States
Agnès Varda turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration against the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton. In addition to evincing Varda’s fascination with her adopted surroundings and her empathy, this perceptive sho...
