Hmmm, that's the way, isn't it? We bitch about a film like Let's Get Lost not playing in L.A. and lo and behold there pops up an embarrassment of great and terminally underseen jazz films playing 'round the way, thanks to partners Filmforum and Cinefamily. Coming up this Thursday (Feb. 7th) is Shirley Clarke's documentary Ornette: Made in America (1985), followed this Sunday by Ron Mann's Imagine The Sound (1981), featuring the music of Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Paul Bley and Bill Dixon. On Thursday the 21st, Stevenson Palfi's celebrated New Orleans doc Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together (1982), which features three generations of New Orleans pianists: Isidore "Tuts" Washington, Henry Roeland "Professor Longhair" Byrd and Allen Toussaint. (It's a wonderful film, and quite poignant in the wake of the filmmaker's suicide shortly after Hurricane Katrina.)
Not only THAT dear readers, but on Thursday the 28th, the Silent Movie Theatre will be hosting an EXTREMELY RARE screening one of the great underground jazz films of the 1970s: Passing Through, directed by Larry Clark, co-written by Ted Lange (yes, "Isaac" from Das Love Boat) and featuring the music of Horace Tapscott and the Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra.
CRYPTOGRAMOPHONE: WHINING 'TIL WE GET OUR WAY
