
Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life
★ 6.8 · 1935 · 9m · Music · Drama
A rising nineteen-year-old singer by the name of Billie Holiday made her screen debut in this musical landmark, which features Duke Ellington and his orchestra performing his symphonic jazz piece “A Rhapsody of Negro Life” set to scenes of everyday African American life.
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Good Stock On The Dimension Floor: An Opera
2014
A collectively made filmic opera in 35 parts. The Black and predominantly queer art collective, an evolving line up of poets and artists from across the world, abstracts and reimagines opera in any traditional conception. Set to hip-hop, blues, noise, R&B and electronica, the piece uses the voice (chanting, singing, screaming; written by poet and activist Dawn Lundy Martin) as its primary tool, verbalising centuries of alienation, vulnerability and protest in the global African diaspora through its disruptive libretto.
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Tambo Jazz
1993
Documentary about the origins of jazz in Panama, which generated the tambojazz genre.
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Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
2021 · ★ 7.6
During the same summer as Woodstock, over 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, celebrating African American music and culture, and promoting Black pride and unity. The footage from the festival sat in a basement, unseen for over 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America's history lost — until now.
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Trap Jazz
2023 · ★ 5.5
Atlanta musicians behind some of the biggest names in music embark on an uncertain journey into the spotlight with a new genre of music that fuses trap music with jazz.
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Blank Space
2026 · ★ 10
A disheartened young pianist retreats into the woods, only to discover a strange patch of land that seemingly disappears objects into a mysterious void beyond reality. INTO FILM AWARD 2026 OFFICIAL SELECTION
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Moor Mother: Jazz Codes
2022 · ★ 5.2
Poet, musician, visual artist, and Afrofuturist Moor Mother roams a hallucinatory Mojave Desert alone. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Moor Mother visits the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra HQ and plays with jazz luminaries and elders, including Henry “The Skipper” Franklin, Michael Session, and Maia.
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Al Di Meola Jean-Luc Ponty Stanley Clarke Live at Montreux
1994 · ★ 7
Guitarist Al di Meola, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, and bassist Stanley Clarke, all of whom recorded numerous albums as leaders during the 1970s and 1980s, join forces for this 1994 concert in Montreux. Each musician's compositions are featured in this mostly acoustic performance, though charts were necessary to help them find their way through unfamiliar pieces. There is a noticeable lack of ego apparent on-stage, with no one player trying to steal the spotlight. For his solo feature, "Eulogy to Oscar Romero," Ponty incorporates the use of a digital delay to accompany himself, while Clarke's and di Meola's solo performances are more in the context of the concert. CD The Rite of Strings, which was recorded the following year.
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Take Five
1972 · ★ 6.8
Early experimental film from Zbigniew Rybczynski that broke new ground in the use of pixelation, optical printing, animation and other compositional film devices. Beautiful jazz score and color usage.
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1995 · ★ 7
Three young men have an interest they all burn for - jazz. But in the 1930's northern Sweden not many people like the new form of music. So when the three guys get a chance to make a journey to New York they take it.
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