Film

Part of MFAH's "Jazz on Film" series Houston premiere In 1974, one of the prime architects of bossa nova, Antonio Carlos Jobim (Tom), and popular Brazilian singer Elis Regina came together to record what would become one of the most iconic albums in the history of Brazilian music. Through extensive, long-unseen film footage shot at […]

50th Anniversary Calling planet Earth! Jazz on Film is pleased to present a special 50th-anniversary screening of the Afrofuturist classic Space Is the Place. Avant-garde jazz mystic Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Myth-Science Arkestra land their yellow spaceship in Oakland offering an alter-destiny to Black youth, including battling the FBI, NASA, and a supernatural pimp […]

This screening presents two short documentaries by filmmakers Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss that spotlight often unsung women of jazz. International Sweethearts of Rhythm tells the fascinating story of the seriously swinging, multiracial, all-women jazz big band of the 1940s. Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be in Love is a portrait of the largely forgotten jazz […]

Between the 1950s and 1970s, animators John and Faith Hubley made their own independent films with intelligence, passion, humor, and great music. Their poetic sensibility and whimsical, impressionistic visual style fit perfectly with jazz music. “There’s something about jazz’s bending of time within a rigid format that also applies to animation,” Faith Hubley once observed. […]