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 George Nierenberg • Documentary • With Thomas A. Dorsey, Willie Mae Ford Smith, Delois Barrett Campbell, Billie Barrett GreenBey, Rodessa Barrett Porter, Edgar O'Neal, Edward O'Neal • 1982 • 100 minutes
One of the most acclaimed music documentaries of all time, Say Amen, Somebody is ...
Directed by Lloyd Ross • Documentary • 2007 • 52 minutes
An American in Sophiatown puts Come Back, Africa into the context of the time it was made ( 1957-1958) - recreating the sense of danger, the intrigues which were necessary to make the film under the nose of the apartheid regime. We come to...
Directed by Leo Hurwitz • Documentary • With Alfred Drake, Muriel Smith, Gary Merrill
• 1948 • 71 minutes
The year was 1945. The free world rejoices over the defeat of fascism. But the peace soon chilled, and in the Cold War that followed the United States entered a period of national paranoia...