Landmark documentary chronicling Detroit’s innovative jazz legacy and the creative and resilient African American community that created it.
The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit is a landmark double portrait of Detroit’s extraordinary jazz legacy and the dynamic city that produced it. Inspired by Mark Stryker’s award-winning 2019 book, Jazz from Detroit, the documentary chronicles the defining influence of Detroit’s innovative jazz musicians and makes the case that you can’t tell the history of jazz without telling the history of jazz from Detroit. Set within Detroit’s dramatic rise and fall as an industrial power and the struggles and triumphs of its creative and resilient African American community, the film weaves a compelling historical and cultural tapestry through the 20th and 21st centuries. (Daniel Loewenthal, director. 90 minutes)
Doors open at 7, screening starts at 8, followed by a Q-and-A with filmmakers Daniel Loewenthal, Roberta Friedman, and Mark Stryker