Chicagoans have the opportunity to see a larger-than-average number of jazz-related films this month. Currently playing in weeklong runs are Francis Ford Coppola’s new director’s cut of The Cotton Club (at the Landmark Century) and the new documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (at the Gene Siskel Film Center), and a week from tonight the Chicago Film Society will screen Robert Altman’s 1997 documentary Jazz ’34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing at the Music Box Theatre as part of its ongoing collaboration with the Jazz Institute of Chicago. This partnership has already yielded some wonderful programs this year, including 35-millimeter revivals of Arthur Penn’s 1961 oddity Mickey One, Shirley Clarke’s experimental documentary Ornette: Made in America (1985), and Spike Lee’s perennially underrated Mo’ Better Blues (1990). Next month the two organizations will present another exciting revival, a 16-millimeter screening of Terry Zwigoff’s Louie Bluie (1985) at Pilsen’s Filmfront.
The Cry of Jazz Edward O. Bland’s fascinating and quirky 35-minute essay, made in Chicago in 1959, argues that the long-suffering Blacks who produced jazz offer essential expressions of the African American spirit. In one bitter and hilarious moment, “white jazz”—sounding a lot like elevator music—accompanies images of a suburban train station and someone grooming a dog, contrasting the film’s taut urban imagery with suburban blandness. A rough-edged but provocative melange, this improbably mixes great footage of Sun Ra, sections that have the feel of cheesy 50s instructional films, and staged scenes in which Black and white actors woodenly portray members of a “jazz club” who meet in someone’s apartment. —Fred Camper
