Rewind & Play

Put together and rearranged from footage recovered from Thelonious Monk’s 1969 French tour, this fascinating documentary places a specific focus on an interview/concert the extraordinary jazz pianist gave to a local TV show. The film begins with the arrival of Monk and his wife in Paris, where he is welcomed like a celebrity. Soon we see him recording the show. Gomis doesn’t show us the program as it finally aired, but rather what happened behind the scenes during the shooting. And what took place there is striking, surprising and quite unpleasant. Monk was already somewhat ill, and his experience there was catastrophic, with a presenter and producers forcing him to answer the same questions over and over or interrupting his answers mid-sentence. Treated as if he were a puppet, a curiosity or an object of consumption, the visibly fragile and heavily perspiring pianist suffers through the experience in a visible way, but nobody stops the circus to ask how he actually feels. In the few moments he is allowed to play the piano, Monk seems to find some sort of inner peace and is able to express himself as he wants to. The best way he knows how to fight racism and oppression is through his art. (Diego Lerer)

Alain Gomis: CARAMELS ET CHOCOLATS (1996, K), TOUT LE MONDE PEUT SE TROMPER (1998, K), TOURBILLONS (1999, K), L’AFRANCE (2002), AHMED (2006, K), ANDALUCIA (2008), AUJOURD’HUI (2012), FÉLICITÉ (2017)