Karel Reisz & Tony Richardson, 1955
One of the foundation stones of British Free Cinema, this 22-minute short shows trad antics at Wood Green Jazz Club, with the Chris Barber Band featuring Lonnie Donegan. Years later, Absolute Beginners (Julien Temple, 1985) would be derided for its high-gloss reimagining of the London jazz scene in its heyday, but with input from Gil Evans and a dazzling fantasia on Charles Mingus’s Boogie Stop Shuffle, it’s not to be dismissed.
The Connection
Shirley Clarke, 1961
Jazz was as vital to the new American independent cinema of the 1950s and 60s as it was to the era’s poetry and painting. One of the most famous jazz-influenced films of this period was John Cassavetes’s Shadows (1959), but just as vital was Clarke’s film, based on Jack Gelber’s play about a group of jazz-scene heroin addicts waiting for their man: among the cast, pianist Freddie Redd, who wrote the score, and altoist Jackie McLean.