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
-
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...
-
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...
-
The Cry of Jazz
Directed by Edward Bland • 1959 • United States
Starring George Waller, Dorothea Horton, Melinda DillonFeaturing 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 ...
