Directed by Shirley Clarke • Documentary • With Ornette Coleman, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Buckminster Fuller, Don Cherry, Yoko Ono, Charlie Haden, Robert Palmer • 1985 • 85 minutes
Returning in 1983 to his home in Fort Worth, Texas, documentary footage and dramatic scenes recall legendary performer and composer Ornette Coleman's rise from oppressed youth to cultural pioneer. Raised in segregated Texas before traveling the world from Morocco to New York, his subsequent emergence as a world-class jazz musician earned Ornette praise from the lines of icon William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Buckminster Fuller, Don Cherry, Yoko Ono, Charlie Haden, Robert Palmer and more – all contributors to this film. Featuring some of the first music-video-style footage of its time, director Shirley Clarke and producer Kathelin Hoffman employed innovative techniques to capture the extraordinary vision of the man behind the music. Ornette: Made in America is essential for anyone hoping to understand the history of jazz and the fertile creative exchange that highlighted the 60’s and 70’s in America.
Directed by Kenneth Bowser • Documentary • With Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Tom Hayden, Christopher Hitchens, Sean Penn, Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow • 2010 • 97 minutes
As our country continues to embroil itself in foreign wars, PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE is a timely and relevant tribute to an u...
Directed by Joe Angio • Documentary • With Fred Armisen, Jonathan Franzen, Mary Harron • 2014 • 96 minutes
Revenge of the Mekons charts the unlikely career of the genre-defying collective notorious for being—as rock critic Greil Marcus notes—“the band that took punk ideology most seriously.” Bor...
Directed by Mark Becker • Documentary • With Carmelo Muñiz Sánchez • 2005 • 84 minutes
More than just a documentary dispatch from the illegal immigration frontlines, Mark Becker's Romántico evolves from a verite view of undocumented alien subculture to a deeply personal, "beautifully realized" (...