Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser

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Eye Filmmuseum

7 February Eye is closed

Eye Filmmuseum seen across the river IJ © Marcus Koppen

Eye Filmmuseum, © Marcus Koppen

still from Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (Charlotte Zwerin, US 1989)

still Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (Charlotte Zwerin, US 1989)

poster Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (Charlotte Zwerin, US 1989)

campaign image All That Jazz (© René Gast & Yvonne Kroese (wallstories.org))

campaign image All That Jazz

Eye on Sound: Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1989) (soundwave)

still from Bird (Clint Eastwood, US 1988)

Eye on Sound: Bird (1988) (soundwave)

still from Ornette: Made in America (Shirley Clarke, US 1985)

Eye on Sound: Ornette: Made in America (1985) (soundwave)

still from Lets Get Lost (Bruce Weber, US 1989)

Eye on Sound: Lets Get Lost (1989) (soundwave)

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Clint Eastwood and jazz? It’s hard to imagine, however the later Dirty Harry was already playing jazz piano aged 15 and saw Charlie Parker at a Jazz at the Philharmonic gig. Bird is Eastwood’s homage to bebop’s genius leader.

“America has produced two unique artforms,” Clint Eastwood concluded in an interview with the LA Times: “jazz and the western.” And the jazz fanatic and icon of the (spaghetti)western is passionate about both.Bird is about the genius of Charlie Parker, played by the phenomenal Forest Whitaker, and pays homage to an innovative jazz style from the 1940s, outlining the final years of Parker’s life during which his heroin addiction got the upper hand. The music is the focus: original Parker saxophone solos were incorporated into modern recordings, a technical feat pulled off by Eastwood’s preferred composer Lennie Niehaus, who, moreover, taught Forest Whitaker – who won in Cannes – to convincingly pretend to play sax.

Bird

Meandering documentary about jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman by New York avantgarde filmmaker Shirley Clarke. Clarke’s free form approach to the film, echoed Coleman’s artistic approach: free, associative and unconventional. Followed by the controversial short film The Cry of Jazz.

At the time, The Connection was praised as a masterpiece and became very influential among filmmakers. However, it hasn’t been screened in cinemas since the early 1980s. Until now that is! This wonderfully restored documentary by groundbreaking, independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke records jazz iconoclast Ornette Coleman’s performances from Fort Worth to Morocco. With contributions from luminaries including William Burroughs, Buckminster Fuller, Yoko Ono and Robert Palmer. Ornette: Made in America is essential for anyone wishing to understand the history of jazz and the fertile creative exchanges of the 1970s and 1980s in the country. It is a portrait of the inner life of an artist-innovator captured using equally novel techniques closely associated to music. The Cry of Jazz
 Afterwards, Eye will screen the controversial film The Cry of Jazz (1958, 34') by Edward Bland that is now viewed as one of the earliest (influential) films in black independent cinema which has led to the film also being referred to as ‘the first hip hop film’. The Cry of Jazz starts with a conversation between jazz lovers and intellectuals about the state of jazz in 1958 and the extent to which the black emancipation movement plays a role in (the appreciation of) jazz. Subsequently, in a number of chapters, live music by Sun Ra is employed to tell the history of jazz.

Ornette: Made in America + The Cry of Jazz

Fascinating portrait of jazz trumpetist Chet Baker, made by photographer Bruce Weber, paints a disturbing picture of a musician brought low by his drug addiction. The trumpet player’s appeal and many flaws captured in a noir documentary.

Bruce Weber’s masterpiece about the cool jazz legend, shows how Chet Baker’s drug abuse would ultimately result in his death. The film was shot a mere four months before the latter’s deadly fall from an Amsterdam hotel window.

Let's Get Lost

exclusiveScreeningsInEye

It’s an understatement to say Thelonious Monks had an idiosyncratic way of playing piano. The bebop pioneer bashed the keys like someone possessed, knotted melodies and angular, jumpy notes into a pure whole resulting in what are now standards such as ‘Straight No Chaser’. A portrait of a jazz legend, on Sept 18 with an introduction by pianist Oscar Jan Hoogland.

Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie were the founders of a new jazz style: bebop. They rose to prominence in the early 1940s, initially underground, among African American jazz fans and a few Caucasian jazz cats such as author Jack Kerouac who was studying at Columbia University at the time. Monk transferred the super fast, jumpy, angular riffs of bebop (‘ugly-beautiful tunes’) to the piano. His style has been described as that of ‘a man smacking an alligator’s back’, a good characterisation of Monk’s idiosyncratic playing and character.
 Tormented
 Director Charlotte Zwerin (known for the renowned Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter (1970) among other things) created this empathetic portrait of Monk as a jazz legend, genius innovator and tormented man on the edge of madness, and sometimes over it. Zwerin utilised archival black &amp; white footage from the 1960s intercut with interviews with other jazz musicians including John Coltrane, Theo Macero, Monk’s tenor sax player Charlie Rouse as well as his wife and son. Jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood was executive producer. 
On September 18, pianist and 'enfant terrible of the new Dutch impro scene' Oscar Jan Hoogland will give an introduction.

Jazz greats like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon and Ornette Coleman have all made music for a film at one time or another. As musicians, they have contributed to works by idiosyncratic directors such as Louis Malle, Bertrand Tavernier and David Cronenberg.

Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser

Charlotte Zwerin / US, 1989 / 90 min.

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Ornette: Made in America + The Cry of Jazz

Bird

Let's Get Lost

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All That Jazz