The earliest 'rockumentary' of John Mayall and his musicians filmed in their homes, dressing rooms, motorways, airports, clubs, concert halls and at festivals.
Ivanhoe Martin arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, looking for work and, after some initial struggles, lands a recording contract as a reggae singer. He records his first song, "The Harder They Come," but after a bitter dispute with a manipulative producer named Hilton, soon finds himself resorting to petty crime in order to pay the bills. He deals marijuana, kills some abusive cops and earns local folk hero status. Meanwhile, his record is topping the charts.
A small town band makes it big, but loses track of their roots, as they get caught up into the big-time machinations of the music biz. Now, they must thwart a plot to destroy their home town. Built around the music of The Beatles, this musical uses some big name groups like Peter Frampton and Aerosmith.
The torrid love lives of a millionaire lesbian record producer (Michelle Bauer) trying to sell her house and an all-female rock band (with members Linnea Quigley and Becky LeBeau) willing to do anything for a record deal. Footage from this later turned up as padding in "The New Beverly Hills Girls," which featured Bauer leading a group of models in an attempt to foil the schemes of kidnappers.
The extraordinary life of Quincy Jones -- one of the 20th century's most influential and talented composers, musicians and music producers -- provides the basis of this offbeat, free-form documentary tribute. With little regard for formal timelines and traditional documentary biography methods, the film is an amazing patchwork of personal insights featuring a constellation of music stars including his long-time friend Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Herbie Hancock, Ella Fitzgerald, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie and rappers Big Daddy Kane and Flavor Flav, as well as politicians, filmmakers and other important people. Some of the most moving scenes involve Jones returning to his childhood home in Chicago and recounting honest and painful memories from his childhood. Jones does not shy from discussing everything -- from his mother's mental illness, to his marital problems, to his serious health conditions. He also looks frankly at his career.
Carmen, a journalist with two children, is on her third marriage, to Antonio, a record producer. Over the course of a year, we follow her through her discontents: Antonio's lateness, his fatigue when she wants to make love, his insistence on her company when she prefers solitude, his treating her work as less important than his, his casual and cruel dismissal of her opinions, her boss assigning her an incompetent editor, bartenders ignoring her, her passage into middle age. She can be feisty and edgy, which sometimes gets in the way of what would make her happy. And she regularly threatens to leave Antonio. Will she, and on what terms? What will he do?
Singer Tina Turner rises to stardom while mustering the courage to break free from her abusive husband Ike.
Documentary about the indie rock band Modest Mouse made around 1997, as they were recording their second album, The Lonseome Crowded West
The Limey follows Wilson, a tough English ex-con who travels to Los Angeles to avenge his daughter's death. Upon arrival, Wilson goes to task battling Valentine and an army of L.A.'s toughest criminals, hoping to find clues and piece together what happened. After surviving a near-death beating, getting thrown from a building and being chased down a dangerous mountain road, the Englishman decides to dole out some bodily harm of his own.
Roger Deacon, a down-and-out record producer, is given the job of making a singing star out of an industry mogul's girlfriend, an attractive but talentless starlet. He discovers a housewife with a powerful singing voice and decides to secretly use her to lip sync the other woman's voice for record recordings as a path to fame for her and him.
Four talented alien musicians are kidnapped by a record producer who disguises them as humans. Shep, a space pilot in love with bass player Stella, follows them to Earth. Reprogrammed to forget their real identities and renamed The Crescendolls, the group quickly becomes a huge success playing soulless corporate pop. At a concert, Shep manages to free all the musicians except Stella, and the band sets out to rediscover who they really are — and to rescue Stella.
In this documentary Edo Maajka, Bosnian hip hop star talks about war, his life as a refugee, war crimes, forgiving and making peace, nationalism, music scene in Croatia and Bosnia, Balkans mentality, love and hate, cevap restaurants, Sava river, partings, life of music stars, Lepa Brena and Nele Karajlic, politicians. His mode of narration and his charisma, his sincerity and his relaxed camera appearance will surely capture the spectators' attention.
THE GODFATHER OF BRITISH BLUES: The film biography features contributions from John Mayall himself, his family, fellow musicians, colleagues and friends, in interviews and performances. Rare archival film from all periods of his career marks his achievements and some of the events that formed them. THE TURING POINT: The earliest 'rockumentary' of John Mayall and his musicians filmed in their homes, dressing rooms, mororways, airports, clubs, concert halls and at festivals.
This film tells (using modern day interviews and archival footage and sound tapes) the story of how in 1967, while his band The Beach Boys triumphantly toured abroad, Brian Wilson was trying to push the boundaries of conventional pop music with a new follow-up to the Beach Boys' cutting-edge mega-hit, Pet Sounds. The new album was to be called "SMiLE". SMiLE pushed the envelope both musically and lyrically, and was supposed to out-do the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper record. But Brian wasn't able to sell the project to his band-mates when they returned. The project was shelved and Wilson's well-documented decline into depression, drug abuse, recluseness, and obesity had begun. Thirty-odd years later, Wilson announced that in 2004, SMiLE would be performed live in its entirety in London. This film tells the story of a damaged but healing artist bringing his greatest work to light.
Born on a sharecropping plantation in Northern Florida, Ray Charles went blind at seven. Inspired by a fiercely independent mom who insisted he make his own way, He found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful singer gained a reputation and then exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered coupling gospel and country together.
In the void created ad hoc to throw us into desperation, fear, shock, the torment of an infinite present, Arto Lindsay sings with words, silences and small gestures of/with/for/about love, a force that is so violent that nothing will ever be the same again.
The portrait of Zdenko Franjić, a record producer of alternative rock bands in ex-Yugoslavia.
Dieters grandma knew it from the start. This guy will be special one. She should be right. Even as a child Dieter shows an enormous power when it is necessary to enforce his will. He quickly learn that you can not only impress the girls, but also make a lot of money as a musician. He understands that the success is mainly a question of the postage costs and a healthy liver. That you may not always tell the truth, but you should always have something lying on the high edge.
The film draws from the important stages and events in Richie Hawtin’s personal and artistic life, and follows Hawtin’s transformation from introverted and transplanted computer nerd into a DJ and techno-entrepreneur. The 70 min documentary features an extensive archive of unreleased photos, video and interviews. Of special interest are Hawtin’s relationship with his family, especially his technophile dad, his fascination with Detroit and his early DJ gigs.
A trio of female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s, facing their own personal struggles along the way.