The newly restored documentary will premiere tonight at the IFC Center in New York.
Ornette: Made in America is a documentary by Shirley Clarke about the life and work of legendary American jazz musician Ornette Coleman – saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer, founder of the free jazz movement in the 60’s and 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner for his album Sound Grammar.
The documentary was recorded in 1985, the digital restored version is part of The Shirley Clarke Project by the Milestone Films, who will release another two restored movies and few short movies by the American directoress who died in 1997.
Clarke started working on the Coleman documentary in the 60’s. She met him in Texas in the 80’s at the opening of a innovative cultural center Caravan of Dreams, at which Coleman performed with his band Prime Time. The center’s producer Kathelin Hoffman insisted in the collaboration, and the three year shooting resulted in an untypical documentary that consists of archival takes and 16mm footage, retrospective and dream sequences, animation, Buckminster Fuller theories as well as Coleman’s musings on the intellectual and experiential basis for Southern jazz and blues, and North African influences on 1960s luminaries.
Take a look at the quartet performance of this top artist, at the French festival Jazz a Vienne in 2008.