Sights of the sounds

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This article was published 20/06/2019 (2688 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For some mysterious reason, many documentary filmmakers seem to be deeply attracted to jazz. Perhaps it’s because the two arts inform one another. Like jazz, a doc can be conventional, classic, free-form or wildly experimental.

In any case, jazz and docs go together like cartoons and mice, rom-coms and coincidences, slasher movies and summer camps. And the love affair continues in Cinematheque’s annual mini-fest of music-themed films screened to coincide with the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival.

On this year’s program:

 

Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes

(Thursday, June 20 at 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, June 22 and 23 at 3 p.m.)

Director Sophie Huber offers a peek behind the venerable facade of Blue Note Records, a label that hosted some of the most challenging, cutting-edge jazz greats, including Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Bud Powell and Art Blakey.

This 85-minute film explores that heritage, but also how Blue Note moved into the 21st century, incorporating hip-hop into the jazz mix, most famously in the release of the 2003 cut Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) by Us3, which sampled Herbie Hancock’s 1964 track Cantaloupe Island, becoming a huge hit.

Hancock is one of the interviewees in this film, along with expert witnesses such as Ali Shaheed Muhammad (A Tribe Called Quest), Robert Glasper, Wayne Shorter and Norah Jones.

 

 

Carmine Street Guitars

(Saturday and Sunday, June 22 and 23 at 5 p.m.; Wednesday, June 26 at 9 p.m.; Thursday, June 27 at 7 p.m.)

Canadian director Ron Mann (Comic Book Confidential, Grass) shot this loving 80-minute portrait of a Greenwich Village shop operated by custom guitar maker Rick Kelly and his young apprentice Cindy Hulej. Kelly and Hulej build handcrafted guitars out of wood reclaimed from old hotels, bars, churches and other local buildings.

Shot from the perspective of a guy hanging out at the store, the film features guitar performances and stories from a cool cast of players and artists, including Jim Jarmusch, Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Marc Ribot and Kirk Douglas (of the Roots… as opposed to Kirk Douglas of Spartacus).

 

 

Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.

(Thursday, June 20 at 9 p.m.; Saturday, June 22 at 9 p.m.; Sunday, June 23 at 7 p.m.)

Director Steve Loveridge’s 96-minute film is an extensive look at the life and career of M.I.A., an artist whose startling past (she is the daughter of the founder of Sri Lanka’s armed Tamil resistance, was a refugee and eventually an art student) all informs her current identity as a hip-hop recording artist.

 

Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story

(Friday, June 21 at 9 p.m.; Saturday, June 22 at 7 p.m.; Wednesday, June 26 at 7 p.m.; Thursday, June 27 at 9 p.m.)

This 95-minute doc from director John Anderson explores the life and career of legendary blues man Paul Butterfield, following him from his origins as a white, teenage harmonica player from Chicago’s south side, where he learned from the original black masters (including his lifelong friend, Muddy Waters) performing on his own home turf. Butterfield, who died in 1987 at the age of 44, is remembered by interview subjects, including Elvin Bishop, BB King and Todd Rundgren. Tickets to each screening are $10.

— Randall King