Jazz Messenger

Screen
03/21 10:30 1 hall

78min/DVD

with Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Wayne Shorter and many other musicians.

At this year's Grammy Awards in the US, the legendary jazz drummer Art Blakey was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to American music - posthumously. He would have chuckled since his subversive message of musical freedom and his extraordinary and completely original power as a mentor for several generations of young musicians went unacknowledged in his lifetime - except, of course, by them.

The film follows Art Blakey on a trip to the UK to administer a rite of passage for a new breed of young British musicians and dancers who want to continue spreading his message. Meanwhile, the film tracks back through his career and several of the legendary musicians who have been his colleagues remember him. We witness rehearsals, performances and, finally, on his return to New York the highly personal process he goes through to form a new band after sending a new cadre of messengers out into the world.

DICK FONTAINE

Dick Fontaine has made over forty films for TV and theatrical release, work characterized by a desire to push the boundaries of documentary form in particular. With his partner, Pat Hartley, he runs GRAPEVINE PICTURES , an independent New York based production company specializing in documentary, music and original drama. He has combined his career as a filmmaker, with an active role in the initiation of new structures to further cinema, particularly in teaching.

Since 1995, he has run the prestigious Documentary Dept . at the postgraduate National Film and Television School in the UK . In 1993, he started a film production course at The School of Visual Arts in New York and he has led courses in Independent Production, Filmmaking during the US Civil Rights Era and Black Images in Film at MIT, Amherst College , Rutgers University , New York University, and The State University of New York . In the seventies, he was asked by the Government of Tanzania to direct their Ujaamaa Cinema Project and to set up a training programme in Dar-es-Salaam. He has taught teachers for the British Film Institute , at various community video projects in London . He has an MA and BA in Moral Sciences (Philosophy ) from Cambridge University .

He began his career at Granada Television in Manchester and quickly rose to the position of producer/director, becoming a founder member of Granada 's legendary investigative film series World in Action , winning a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award in 1963. He was also the first filmmaker to introduce the techniques of " Direct Cinema " to UK television in the Sixties .

As an ex-musician, he has produced a wide range of films exploring culture through music with the likes of Kathleen Battle, Betty Carter, John Cage, Johnny Rotten, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman and his film The Jazz Messenger with Art Blakey has won many awards and was distributed theatrically in the US . In addition, he has made a great many experimental and commercial music video projects with hiphop, jazz and classical music.