The Nine Muses + Archie Shepp á Alger

Archie Shepp à Alger
D: Théo Robichet, France/Algeria, 1971, 17 min. French OV

One of the most outstanding encounters in the history of jazz. The short film shows Archie Shepp’s concert in the streets of Algiers during the legendary first Pan-African Festival in 1969, where the free-jazz saxophonist improvised with fellow jazz greats Alan Silva, Sunny Murray, Clifford Thornton and Grachan Moncur III.

The Nine Muses
D: John Akomfrah, Ghana/UK 2010, 90 min, English OV

"What makes the documentary a success is that the African immigrants are at once detached from standard cultural plugs (rhythmic music, soulful dancing, hand-clapping church services, confrontations with racists) and yet are not universalized. ...Instead, the radical detachment, the unconscious stream of European poetry and philosophy, and those frozen Alaskan landscapes make the ghosts even more haunting, more unfamiliar, more distant. They might exist in a place and a time that is inaccessible."
— Charles Mudede, The Stranger