Jazz In Exile – Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe & Cecil Taylor à Paris

Jazz on Screen at the Barbican, Cinema 1, Sun 16 Nov 2025

Jazz In Exile – Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe & Cecil Taylor à Paris + Intro by Ehsan Khoshbakht

This double bill offers two distinct portraits of ground-breaking American jazz musicians living and working in Europe, each navigating cultural displacement in their own unique way.

Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe (1967) offers a lyrical, offstage portrait of a legendary saxophonist in Amsterdam. Ben Webster cooks, films his own life and reflects on the blues. In the film, his music and spirit explored through poetic visuals and intimate moments.

Cecil Taylor à Paris (1968) is a fierce, fast-cut portrait of an avant-garde pianist in Paris, rejecting the European canon and rooting his explosive sound in the Black American experience. The filmmaking mirrors the music’s energy, becoming a bold improvisation of its own.

Together, they reveal what it meant to be a Black jazz artist abroad, displaced not just by geography, but by culture, politics and sound.

Jazz on a Summer's Day (Bert Stern, 1959)

Review of the Blu-ray release for Sight & Sound, March-April 2023. – EK

Jazz on a Summer's Day

The annual Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island received its only movie treatment thanks to Bert Stern, a photographer famous for his portraits of female stars and models – which should explain the film's fascination with fashion and the idea of the "cool". Here the attitude of the performer – the magnificent detachment of Thelonious Monk, the movie-star glamour of Anita O'Day – is as important as the sound. Equally instrumental in the direction (though, to his dismay, uncredited) and responsible for editing the film was Aram Avakian, who constructs the rapport between the performers and the festival audience, both captured at graceful ease.

Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life (Fred Waller, 1935)

Billie Holiday in Symphony in Black

Duke Ellington receives a telegram reminding him of his forthcoming concert in two weeks’ time—not a terribly long notice for finishing an extended composition that seemingly hasn’t been touched before, but most probably accurate, since Ellington was one of the greatest procrastinators in jazz, often writing right up until the curtain rose.

Jammin' the Blues (Djon Mili, 1944)

Like Forough Farrokhzad and Jean Genet, the Albanian-born Djon Mili belongs to that small group of artists who, when counted officially (theatrical release of a completed film), might have directed only one short film. Yet that short, entitled Jammin' the Blues (1944), remains a touchstone of jazz on film.

The Brave Bulls (Robert Rossen, 1951)

The new 4K restoration of the film – courtesy of Sony/Columbia – plays on November 8 at Harvard Film Archive as part of the retrospective co-curated by Haden Guest and me, Columbia 101: The Rarities. — EK

The Brave Bulls was Robert Rossen’s final film in a cycle of four complex explorations of corruption and fear (Johnny O'clock, The Undercover Man, All the King's Men) that he either directed or wrote for Columbia. A brutally frank bullfighting drama, the film follows a matador (Mel Ferrer) who, beginning to crack under the pressure of his profession and a newfound fear of the ring, seeks to reclaim control over his life. Anthony Quinn plays a typically Rossenian character—a charismatic manipulator who, like Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men, holds the power to both redeem and destroy.

Address Unknown (William Cameron Menzies, 1944)

Playing at Harvard Film Archive on November 8, 2025, as part of "Columbia Rarities". — EK

In 1930s Germany, a congenial gallery owner falls under the spell of Nazism. A chilling work of strong political conviction, the film unfolds through the symmetrically menacing compositions of art-director-turned-director William Cameron Menzies. Based on a 1938 short story by Kathrine Kressmann which originally unfolded through a series of letters exchanged between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his business partner, the film was made thanks to a group of talented exiles and refugees. The cast includes Viennese actors Carl Esmond and Mady Christians, Hungarian Paul Lukas and German Peter van Eyck, and it was shot by Polish-Hungarian cinematographer Rudolph Maté, with a score composed by the Austrian Ernst Toch. But the most striking aspect of the film is its design. Menzies—widely regarded as the father of production design—created 800 sketches that served as the film’s visual blueprint. Shapes and forms, vertical and horizontal lines, all add new layers of meaning to Menzies’ finest directorial work.

The Unknown Brilliance – A conversation about Locarno's British postwar cinema retrospective

Mandy

Transcription of a radio interview on the Locarno Film Festival's British postwar cinema retrospective (which I curated), conducted by Julia Baschiera of Austrian broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk and Patrick Wellinski of German station Deutschlandfunk Kultur. This was done over Zoom in late July 2025. Transcription and mild editing is mine. – EK

ORF/Deutschlandfunk Kultur: Maybe you start by explaining to me the retrospective—why you chose the topic this year, how it began, and perhaps the most important aspects?

Ehsan Khoshbakht: Sure. This year's retrospective is on British post-war cinema, films made between September 1945 and the end of 1960. For me, the key reasons for going in that direction were, first of all, that British cinema in general is—surprisingly—one of the least known European cinemas. These films, especially from this period, have rarely had the chance to be screened outside Britain.

There are historical reasons for that. We can blame the Cahiers du Cinéma circle—particularly Truffaut, but also, to some extent, the Franco-Swiss Godard who thought, “Oh, British cinema is terrible.” That’s unfair and totally untrue when you look at the films. So, I thought it was a good starting point.

It’s also the country I live in. In that sense, it’s a tribute to some of the cultural elements that shaped me and encouraged me to come this way. And Locarno itself has a long history of showing British films, going back to the very first editions of the festival. In fact, one of the films in my programme, Hunted by Charles Crichton, actually won the Golden Leopard in 1953. So, this retrospective also continues that tradition.

Washington Merry-Go-Round (James Cruze, 1932)

Astonishingly prefiguring a later Columbia classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), this fast-paced political drama follows the journey of a naïve-looking but savvy Georgia patriot (Lee Tracy), who is placed in Congress by corrupt forces but ultimately turns against his backers to serve the people he meets in the capital’s shantytowns. Premiering just two weeks before one of the most pivotal presidential elections in American history—between Roosevelt and Hoover, with the specter of the Depression looming—Washington Merry-Go-Round was directed by silent-era veteran James Cruze and typified the “topical films” popular at Columbia under Harry Cohn’s leadership. When Roosevelt won, Columbia took out full-page ads in the trade papers proudly noting that its two 1932 films—this one and Frank Capra’s American Madness—had already promised audiences better times and cleaner politics. Both films’ sharp portrayals of political corruption and American idealism derailed by greed and self-interest still resonate powerfully today.

Let Us Live (John Brahm, 1939)

Playing at Harvard Film Archive on November 7. – EK

This extraordinarily grim tale of an innocent cab driver called Brick (Henry Fonda) who, on the eve of his marriage to Mary (Maureen O'Sullivan), is mistakenly identified by eyewitnesses as a robber and murderer, prefigures Fonda’s similar role in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man, made two decades later. Yet in its pessimism and poignancy, it surpasses that later take on the themes of mistaken identity, fate and the threats lurking behind civilized facades.

Abbas Kiarostami's Early Shorts and Features on Criterion Blu-ray

I have written a long essay to accompany a Criterion three-disc set featuring the early work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, produced between 1970 and 1989. This release relaunches the Eclipse series for the home video label, with Imogen Sara Smith serving as the series new editor. 

All of the titles have been restored in 2K by the renowned Bologna-based film restoration laboratory, L’Immagine Ritrovata. 

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