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RESTORED PRINT // VANCITY THEATRE EXCLUSIVE
The first feature documentary by Ron Mann is an eloquent tribute to a four highly celebrated artists that helped forge the avant-garde jazz of the 1960s: Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Paul Bley. Alongside the dynamic performances, the film captures the diverse history and politicized roots of this unique musical genre.
Under the influence of his mentor Emile De Antonio, Mann created a performance-film/documentary, which contradicts the traditions and clichés of both genres. Rather than shoot the musicians in front of a live audience, he had them perform specifi cally for the fi lm and the film's audience. Thus, there are no reaction shots of an audience to mediate between the music and the viewer. No attempt is made to hide the camera or crew in either the interviews or the performances. In the latter case, multiple cameras were used and the musicians were asked to perform pieces, which were less than 10 minutes long - the length of a standard fi lm magazine - so that editing of the music was not required. IMAGINE THE SOUND is the first part of a trilogy. Mann has since made POETRY IN MOTION and COMIC BOOK CONFIDENTIAL, which apply
similar strategies to poets and comic book artists.)
"The dream for me," says Mann in an interview in Toronto's Eye Weekly "is to put out Imagine the Sound with a new digital audio mix. It was recorded at a 24-track studio by Phil Sheridan, so I would be able to remix it digitally and in stereo and provide some of the additional performances that Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor did that aren't in the movie." Dreams can come true. Long unavailable, the film The Globe and Mail called "The Last Waltz of jazz films" has been restored digitally for theatrical presentation. The sound was entirely remixed on ProTools from the original 35mm stereo recorded master and 16mm magnetic dialogue tracks.
Ron Mann (Toronto, 1959) is one of the leading directors in Canadian independent film. He began to make films at the age of 12. He has made numerous documentaries and short films. Two of his films won Best documentary awards at the Chicago Film Festival: Imagine the Sound (1981), dedicated the 1960s free jazz, and Poetry in motion (1982), a portrait of the American contemporary poetic scene. In 2000 he presented at the Torino Film Festival the documentary Grass. Mann has just completed a new feature-lenght documentary Tales of the Rat Fink (2006).
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