DIR: JEAN BACH
US 1994 60mins 4K
On a summer’s morning in 1958, 57 of the most influential jazz musicians to have lived arrived on 126th Street, Harlem, to be photographed by a young freelance art director, Art Kane. The photo that was created became an important piece of history, and the cornerstone of this heartfelt and candid documentary. Snippets of the musicians in action, as well as footage taken on the day of the photo shoot, blend perfectly with interviews which capture a close-knit musical community, still true to its roots.

DIR: CLINT EASTWOOD
US 1988 160mins 4K
Eastwood proves his ability as director in an honest and moving representation of pioneering jazzman Charlie ‘Yardbird’ Parker. The world of 52nd street, Manhattan, comes to life as we are taken on a journey from Parker’s humble beginnings as a youngster on the jazz scene, to his relationship with the beautiful and dedicated Chan, through to his struggle with drug addiction and the decline of his successful career. Parker’s dedication to his music in turn had a permanent impact on the sound of jazz music for generations to come. For the score, Eastwood used Parker’s original solos and had the backing tracks recorded to fit.

WINNER Best Actor (Forest Whitaker) Cannes Film Festival 1988
WINNER Oscar for Best Sound 1989

DIR: CHARLOTTE ZWERIN
US 1988 90mins 4K
Containing some of the most valuable jazz sequences ever captured on film, this biopic reveals to us the importance of jazz great Thelonious Monk not only as a pianist but as a composer as well. As mystical and off-centre as a human as his music was in the smoky jazz clubs of the 1950s and 1960s, Monk is seen as the father of the avant-garde jazz movement, as well as the inventor of bebop. Interviews with relatives, close friends and other jazz greats accompany footage originally shot in the late 1960s which re-surfaced fifteen years later in the early 1980s.

DIR: BERTRAND TAVERNIER
US/FRANCE 1986 131mins 4K
Touted as one of the best jazz films ever to be made, ‘Round Midnight tells the story of troubled American jazz musician Dale Turner (played by real life jazz legend Dexter Gordon). Turner moves to Paris in search of musical recognition and a humanity which is not based on the colour of his skin. A young man obsessed by Turner’s music attempts to help him out of his drug-inflicted despair, and through one fan’s compassion Turner is reunited with what matters most in his life: his music and his family.

WINNER Oscar Best Original Score (Herbie Hancock) 1987