REWIND & PLAY
A Refocus Film Festival Selection
Using rushes from an episode of the French television show Jazz Portrait from December 1969 on which Thelonius Monk appeared, director Alain Gomis recontextualizes the footage of Monk's time in Paris, before his evening concert, to give us a raw and intimate look at an artist who is in the grip of the violent factory of stereotypes from which he is trying to escape. Caught up in the media machine that purports to be welcoming and hip, Monk can only wait for the artifice to be over. An indictment of the media of the time that remains far too relevant today, the film gives us a look at one of the great artists of the 21st century as we have rarely seen him before.
Official Selection: 2022, Berlin Black Star, New York film festivals