Music Films at the Vancouver International Film Festival
posted by Nou Dadoun
 The film festival gets under way this weekend and as usual, there are lots of aural and visual treats for music fans. A couple of films in particular should make some jazz ears perk up.  When Anita O’Day died last year at the age of 87, everyone conceded that it was a miracle that she had lasted that long. Her autobiography High Times, Hard Times starts with a harrowing description of overdosing in an office washroom and being declared (prematurely) dead. But through her stormy life, she was and remained an iconic jazz figure who always thought of herself not as a ‘canary’ but as a vocal instrumentalist on a par with any musician on the stand and her recordings certainly bear that out. From the early days with Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and Roy Eldridge, through collaborations with Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Cal Tjader and Gary McFarland right up to the end, she had a distinctive approach. Her dynamic big hat performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957 was captured in one of the great jazz films Jazz on a Summer’s Day (pictured above) and captured the insouciance and (seeming) innocence of an era. The new film Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer claims to be the definitive documentary of her life and music combining archival footage with some choice reflections (and rants) in her own words - looks pretty promising. Check out the trailer at http://anitaoday.com/documentary.html . The great Cuban singer Benny Moré is not well-known outside Cuba, he never performed in the US or Canada and he died in 1963. But in Cuba, he’s a legend on the par of Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra having lead his own orchestras as well as those of Perez Prado and others; the great singer Compay Segundo has named Moré as his greatest inspiration - "he was a showman and he was the greatest of them all. No one else came near." To this day, there are annual Cuban music festivals in his honour.The new film El Benny does a biographical treatment of his own somewhat turbulent life and besides featuring his own music, includes performances of his music from artists as varied as Chucho Valdes, Juan Formell from Los Van Van and Orishas. For those who take their music further afield, other films include Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic (a documentary about the John Adams' opera about Robert Oppenheimer), Control (the much-anticipated biography of Ian Curtis and Joy Division), 30th Century Man (a new documentary about the legendary Scott Walker) and other films about Fado, Congolese rumba, Argentinian Chamamé and much more. There's a page on the festival website for times, ticket and other information about Vancouver International Film Festival's music films but judging from the lineup, the VIFF folks know their music as well as they know their films. |
