Han Bennink

A documentary about the weeks leading up to the early death of jazz legend Eric Dolphy. Centered around his last month alive and the titular record done in Holland with Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, the documentary traces his LA roots up through the last Charles Mingus tour that led Dolphy to stay in Europe in 1964. The interviews are with a host of contemporaries like Richard Davis, Ted Curson, Nathan Davis and those involved in the Last Date recording. The rare archival footage of Dolphy is riveting. The pictures provided by friends and family also show an intense young man whose future success was assured.

The ten musicians of the current Instant Composers Pool Orchestra are moving fast, slowly, hardly or not at all through Amsterdam city traffic.

How do you become Peter Brötzmann? How do you become what you are: a painter, a musician, an absolute artist? Europe was nothing but a ruin and shame possessed the heart of the young Germans. They needed to invent, scream, regain a lost brotherhood. Overcome this silence! That’s how some young German, British, Dutch, Belgian… musicians made Europe exist long before Maastrich and have kept on cherishing, imperturbably, their freedom! They are no longer twenty-year-olds, but others have followed. They set themselves one constraint: reinvent everything every time. A way to take the very instant into account, to let the unexpected in, to match to the world.

This feature-length documentary chronicles the life and playful methods of Dutch pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg, a significant figure in post-WWII European Jazz and free improvisation. Archival footage, rehearsal / performance sequences and interviews with both Mengelberg (the "godfather of Dutch improvised music") and key collaborators provide a clear insight in Mengelberg's original way of thinking and way of working.

Les Instants Chavirés, situés à Montreuil, sont depuis 1991 un lieu de diffusion pensé comme un laboratoire des musiques improvisées, expérimentales, bruitistes. Après avoir ouvert en tant que salle de jazz contemporain, Les Instants Chavirés s’ouvrent au rock avant-gardiste au milieu des années 90. Depuis la programmation s'est majoritairement orientée vers le rock noise, l'électronique, le bruit… Ce film propose une plongée jubilatoire dans les archives de ce lieu utopique et toujours vaillant, régulièrement électrisé par des performances qui ont toujours fait la part belle aux expérimentations les plus libres.

Matthijs looks back in surprise. With humor, music and other surprises.