American Pop

The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.

Blues in the Night

A struggling band find themselves attached to a fugitive and drawn into a series of old feuds and love affairs, as they try to stay together and find musical success.

A Little Jive Is Good for You

Martha Tilton sings in this Soundies film from 1941, with Slate Brothers, and Ben Pollack and His Orchestra accompanying.

Band of Thieves

A group of prisoners are encouraged to form a jazz band and vow to go straight when they are released to tour the country. However, the trumpets and clarinets are just a cover for a series of robberies. Musical comedy, starring British jazz star Acker Bilk as himself, alongside Jimmy Thompson and Jennifer Jayne.

The Strip

Drummer Stanley Maxton moves to Los Angeles with dreams of opening his own jazz club, but falls in with a gangster and a nightclub dancer and ends up accused of her murder.

Pink Martini Live at Jazz Open Stuttgart

Jordan Jive

Louis Jordan's Orchestra perform Jordan Jive. Setting is a canteen, with the orchestra and audience in US military uniform. The Swing Maniacs go through some extremely strenuous acrobatic dancing.

Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho

This jazz musical short has a comedy plot about marital infidelity. Bandleader Cab Calloway plays a ladies man who dates the wife (Fredi Washington) of a train porter who is frequently absent from home. Calloway and his Orchestra perform "Zaz-zuh-zaz" and "The Lady with the Fan" at the Cotton Club in Harlem.

Sparni

It’s the second semester of junior year for Pierce “Sparni” Sparnroft, a gifted jazz vibraphonist studying at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Sparni’s prospects on the vibes were rejuvenated by their new professor, the world-renowned Steve Nelson, and are to be showcased during a student-driven recital in May 2023. But all the while, Sparni must face a crisis within.

The Sound of Freedom

Based on true events. USSR, 1950s. As the reach of the oppressive communist regime escalates,

Whiplash

A ferocious, bullying music teacher teaches a dedicated student.

Shoe Shine Boy

A teenaged shoeshine boy urgently tries to raise the remaining amount of money he needs to purchase a secondhand bugle before 6p.m.

Great Artists Steal

Set in 1980s Melbourne, a disgraced jazz pianist attempts to get back into his former band by sabotaging his replacement.

The Cry of Jazz

Filmed in Chicago & finished in 1959, The Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race - a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Featured are ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white.

Jam Session

Duke Ellington and Orchestra perform 'C Jam Blues'.

The Apartment Above

Two apartment house dwellers, although unrelated, share the same name. One is an older man with an appreciation for and love of classical music, while the other is a younger man addicted to swing music. The niece of the older man arrives for a visit and gets into the wrong apartment. Complications arise.