Tuesday, June 18, 2013

5 Favorite Jazz Films, Illustrated

Jazz on a Summer's Day
Me and my super-talented friend Naiel Ibarrola have our five favorite jazz films on display on Keyframe in graphic form. Apart from drawing the key characters and musicians related to that particular film, each illustration is devoted to exploring major concept in films about jazz. The colors used allude to how each musician sounds and how those films feel, and frames within the frame, more or less, reflect the filmmaker’s very specific way of handling the compositions or the overall feeling of the film in terms of mise-en-scène and narrative. That’s why Black and Tan (Dudley Murphy, 1929) is made out of one big extensive frame and much abstract and transforming content within it, whereas All Night Long (Basil Dearden, 1962) features eight classically structured frames within the bigger picture, all in accordance with this Shakespearean story told in jazz and its unity of time and space. Some of the concepts regarding jazz and film in these illustrations have been discussed before in my chat to Jonathan Rosenbaum here.

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