Best movies like Monk & Pannonica: An American Story
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Monk & Pannonica: An American Story Starring Thelonious Monk, Pannonica de Koenigswarter, Archie Shepp, Matthew Shipp, and more. If you liked Monk & Pannonica: An American Story then you may also like: Us Again, Nina, OSS 117 Is Unleashed, 'Round Midnight, Jazz on a Summer's Day and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Paris, 1954. The story of the meeting, known thanks to the fortuitous discovery of a forgotten notebook, full of notes and photographs, between a white British aristocrat, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, writer and jazz patron, and a talented black pianist, Thelonious Monk, one of the best bebop jazz musicians of all time; a prodigious union of wills that overcame the most extreme prejudices of the very conservative US society.
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OSS 117 Is Unleashed
An American agent disappears after a scuba diving reconnaissance mission in Corsica. The Secret Service sends agent code name OSS 117 to investigate.
'Round Midnight
Inside the Blue Note nightclub one night in 1959 Paris, an aged, ailing jazzman coaxes an eloquent wail from his tenor sax. Outside, a young Parisian too broke to buy a glass of wine strains to hear those notes. Soon they will form a friendship that sparks a final burst of genius.
Jazz on a Summer's Day
Set at the Newport jazz festival in 1958, this documentary mixes images of water and the town with performers and audience. The film progresses from day to night and from improvisational music to Gospel. It's a concert film that suggests peace and leisure, jazz at a particular time and place.
The Josephine Baker Story
Biography of the African-American who became a major performer in the Paris cabarets of the 1920s and 1930s. The film follows her life beginning as a struggling performer in 1917 St. Louis, her frustrations leading to her move to France, and follows to her death in 1975. Written by John Sacksteder
Born to Be Blue
Jazz legend Chet Baker finds love and redemption when he stars in a movie about his own troubled life to mount a comeback.
Soul
Joe Gardner is a middle school teacher with a love for jazz music. After a successful audition at the Half Note Club, he suddenly gets into an accident that separates his soul from his body and is transported to the You Seminar, a center in which souls develop and gain passions before being transported to a newborn child. Joe must enlist help from the other souls-in-training, like 22, a soul who has spent eons in the You Seminar, in order to get back to Earth.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Tensions rise when the trailblazing Mother of the Blues and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio in 1927. Adapted from August Wilson's play.
Dingo
Young John Anderson is captivated by jazz musician, Billy Cross when he performs on the remote airstrip of his Western Australian outback hometown after his plane is diverted. Years later, now a family man and making a meagre living tracking dingoes and playing trumpet in a local band, John still dreams of joining Billy on trumpet and makes a pilgrimage to Paris.
Mo' Better Blues
Talented but self-centered trumpeter Bleek Gilliam is obsessed with his music and indecisiveness about his girlfriends Indigo and Clarke. But when he is forced to come to the aid of his manager and childhood friend, Bleek finds his world more fragile than he ever imagined.
The Fabulous Baker Boys
The lives of two struggling musicians, who happen to be brothers, inevitably change when they team up with a beautiful, up-and-coming singer.
Piano Blues
Director — and piano player — Clint Eastwood explores his life-long passion for piano blues, using a treasure trove of rare historical footage in addition to interviews and performances by such living legends as Pinetop Perkins and Jay McShann, as well as Dave Brubeck and Marcia Ball.
The President's Lady
The story of president Andrew Jackson from his early years, through his meeting with and subsequent marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards. The plot concentrates on the later scandal concerning the legality of their marriage and how they overcame the difficulties.
The Wedding
Shelby Coles (Halle Berry) is engaged to marry talented white jazz musician Meade Howell, but the pair face opposition from both Meade's family, who object to an inter-racial marriage, and Shelby's parents, who want her to marry a professional. As Shelby is afflicted by pre-marital doubts, handsome Lute McNeil arrives on the scene, determined to make Shelby his at any cost.
Paris Blues
During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls and must decide between music and love.
Simply Black
A failed 40 year old comedian wants to organize the first Black protests in France but meeting with other French celebrities of the Black community will make it a whole new adventure.
What Happened, Miss Simone?
The film chronicles Nina Simone's journey from child piano prodigy to iconic musician and passionate activist, told in her own words.
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser
A documentary film about the life of pianist and jazz great Thelonious Monk. Features live performances by Monk and his band, and interviews with friends and family about the offbeat genius.
My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud
May, 1946, in Paris young poet Jacques Prevel meets Antonin Artaud, the actor, artist, and writer just released from a mental asylum. Over ten months, we follow the mad Artaud from his cruel coaching of an actress in his "theatre of cruelty" to his semi-friendship with Prevel who buys him drugs and hangs on his every word. Meanwhile, Prevel divides his time between Jany, his blond, young, drug-hazed mistress, and Rolande, his dark-haired, long-suffering wife, who has a child during this time. Cruelty, neglect, poverty, egoism, madness, and the pursuit of art mix on the Left Bank.
The L-Shaped Room
Jane is young, French, pregnant and unmarried. Bucking convention, she is uninterested in settling with her baby's father or getting an abortion. After renting a room in a dingy London boarding house, Jane befriends the odd group of inhabitants and starts an affair with one boarder, Toby. As Jane's pregnancy threatens her new relationship, and the reality of single motherhood approaches, she is forced to decide what to do about both her baby and her budding romance.
For Lovers Only
FOR LOVERS ONLY is a story of a MAN and a WOMAN in love. After seeing each other for the first time in years while on separate work assignments in Paris, the LOVERS flee together and travel by train, car and motorcycle, as their love affair takes them across France-from Normandy to St. Tropez. Throughout their trip, both characters experience long periods of carefree bliss and unrepentant joy punctuated by brief moments of guilt and confusion. The final outcome of the affair is left open to interpretation.
A Man Called Adam
A famous jazz trumpeter finds himself unable to cope with the problems of everyday life.
New Orleans
A gambling hall owner relocates from New Orleans to Chicago and entertains his patrons with hot jazz by Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman, and others.
Mama's Boy
Traveling back to the places where he grew up, Dustin Lance Black explores his childhood roots, gay identity and close relationship with his mother, who overcame childhood polio, abusive marriages and Mormon dogma, while becoming Black’s emotional rock and, ultimately, the inspiration for his activism. With a wealth of personal photographs and candid memories from Black’s family, colleagues, and friends, this documentary embraces the personal to tell a universally hopeful tale of resilience and reconciliation through the power of love and shared stories.
Chasing Trane
An account of the life of the brilliant jazz musician John Coltrane (1926-67), a gifted saxophonist, an extraordinarily talented thinker whose original, avant-garde work has impacted and influenced people all over the world. A story about music's ability to entertain, inspire and transform.
Scott Joplin
The life story of Scott Joplin and how he became the greatest ragtime composer of all time.
Charlie Parker: Bird Songs
In 1955, on his report, a medical examiner wrote in the box: age, “about 53 years”. Charlie Parker nicknamed Bird just died, at 34. His death will be the ransom of a life that was not denied to the excesses or the consuming flame of genius. His wildest improvisations will open the door to future jazzmen. Between shadow and light this film will pay tribute to one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century.
Notes from Dad
Trumpet player Roy Allen starts anew as a music teacher in a school full of kids with little exposure to music. Roy connects with a talented virtuoso in need of a father figure. Through the journey of launching a school band and learning to reach kids on their own terms, Nate reconnects with his own estranged son, becoming the father he always wanted to be.
Paris, 1954. The story of the meeting, known thanks to the fortuitous discovery of a forgotten notebook, full of notes and photographs, between a white British aristocrat, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, writer and jazz patron, and a talented black pianist, Thelonious Monk, one of the best bebop jazz musicians of all time; a prodigious union of wills that overcame the most extreme prejudices of the very conservative US society.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Monk & Pannonica: An American Story Starring Thelonious Monk, Pannonica de Koenigswarter, Archie Shepp, Matthew Shipp, and more. If you liked Monk & Pannonica: An American Story then you may also like: Us Again, Nina, OSS 117 Is Unleashed, 'Round Midnight, Jazz on a Summer's Day and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Us Again
In a vibrant city pulsating with rhythm and movement, an elderly man and his young-at-heart wife rekindle their youthful passion for life and each other on one magical night.