Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
Starring Milford Graves
This 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 the artist’s lush garden and ornate home, into the martial arts dojo in his backyard and the laboratory in his basement—all just blocks from where he grew up in the housing projects of South Jamaica, Queens. Graves tells stories of discovery, struggle, and survival, ruminates on the essence of “swing,” activates electronic stethoscopes in his basement lab to process the sound of his heart, and travels to Japan to perform at a school for children with autism. Oscillating from present to past and weaving intimate glimpses of the artist’s complex cosmology with blistering performances, MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS is cinema full of fluidity, polyrhythm, and intensity, embodying the essence of Graves’s music.
Up Next in The Magic of Milford Graves
-
Milford Graves Live at Jamaica Arts C...
Directed by Jake Meginsky • 2019 • United States
Surrounded by his fellow Yara practitioners, Milford Graves arrives at the arts center in his neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens, for a unique concert, footage of which is interspersed with scenes of the artist in the hospital that same summer.
-
Graves in the Garden
Directed by Jake Meginsky and Sarah Lanzillotta • 2020 • United States
In the heat of the summer, in his backyard garden in Jamaica, Queens, Milford Graves sings to Ọsanyin, the one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged orisha of healing herbs.
-
Bata Wormhole
Directed by Jake Meginsky • 2020 • United States
Shot on 16 mm under the grow lights in the Closed Door Yara Temple behind Milford Graves’s house in Jamaica, Queens, BATA WORMHOLE captures the artist in the heat of his creative process, creating new sculptures which will eventually show at ICA P...
