BBC4TV showed a documentary of clips of Nigel Kennedy playing and speaking about music. Kennedy is one of the greatest living violin players and was identified as a child prodigy. He has lived-up to expectations, and fulfilled his potential entirely.

You can watch the film , here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04w0fyx

Kennedy is an interesting cross-over personality and plays jazz and Hendrix. There were interesting clips of him playing with the great jazz-violin player Stephane Grappelli, who had played with Django Reinhardt.

There’s a short clip of Django playing at the Tabarin club, in Paris, here

https://www.are.na/block/7275521

Kennedy’s career breakthrough was a recording of Vivaldi’s, Four Seasons…from 1989. More recently Max Richter ha deconstructed this Vivaldi in the most interesting way. You can watch Daniel Hope playing the Richter version, here

https://www.are.na/block/3094072

If you are interested, the history of violin making and the distinctive sounds made by different instruments is well-worth finding out about. I’ve posted about this on my New Pamphleteer blog, where there is also a post about the jazz scene in Paris (Boeuf sur le Toit).

The Storyville documentary strand on BBC4TV showed a lovely film about the roller skating scene in the USA. Roller rinks are a long-standing part of American popular culture.

There’s a famous roller-skating scene in the great western film, Heaven’s Gate (1980). And the drive-through diner waitress in American Graffiti is on roller skates. There’s a big roller aesthetic in street wear.

The roller rink scene is a bit different. It’s a big cultural thing for the African-American community, who enjoy family outings to the rink. Everyone gets on.

But, the rinks are closing because of zonal planning (rates) and because there is a huge misunderstanding about large groups of African Americans gathering. There are rules and security checks shown that aren’t applied to their white counterparts. The whole thing is beautiful and too sad…

You can watch the film here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000kxl0/storyville-united-skates

The BBC Arena documentary strand has broadcast an account of the 1960s civil-rights movement derived from the writing and memoirs of James Baldwin (If Beale Street Could Talk etc).

The film presents the struggle through the killings of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000kbk6/arena-i-am-not-your-negro

Amazing.

BBC4TVs Storyville documentary strand has broadcast a film history of the Black Panther movement. The Panthers were the most theoretically sophisticated branch of the civil rights and counter-cultural movements in the US. Their structural understanding of the intersectionality of discrimination was fifty years ahead of its time…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b071gr5h/storyville-the-black-panthers

There’s also a longer PBS documentary about the Panthers.

The US criminal justice system is systemically biased against African-Americans. This amplifies another systemic bias in the public education programmes across the US.

The BBC showed a two-part documentary about the really impressive efforts made by the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000k492/storyville-college-behind-bars-episode-1

Ella Fitzgerald was one of the great voices of the 20C. The BBC have shown a film about her life, here

Ella began singing in Harlem, and took the A Train, to get there, and sang at the famous Cotton Club. The club was famous for establishing the template for the modern jazz and dance club. The story of the Cotton Club has been told, on film, by Francis Ford Coppola.

The spirit of the club is Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers. Check out ucky Number and Jumpin Jive on youtube.

Here are links to a clip from Coppola’s film, and a wonderful version of the Duke’s, A Train, filmed on the train!

https://www.are.na/block/7275535

https://www.are.na/block/7275672

In the 1950s, Ella and her house-band, at Verve records, created the definitive account of the great American song-book

Here is a note, with links, to a previous post about Verve

BBC4TV have previously shown a wonderful film about the history of American tap, and about the jazz ambassadors…

There was a good film about 19C nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale on the BBC.

The Lady with the Lamp is remembered for her work in the Crimean war (1850s) where she, and a group of volunteers, transformed the conditions at the military hospital at Scutari.

Upon arrival, she discovered that conditions were much worse than had been reported. Battlefield surgery was basically amputation of arms and legs, and hope-for-the-best without antibiotics or post-op care. In these circumstances many more soldiers died of infection than from enemy action.

Nightingale understood this as a moral and political scandal and was insistent upon demanding adequate resource to address this problem. She set herself up against a military-industrial and political system that viewed these deaths as heroic, whilst ignoring them.

The administrative powers were able to ignore these deaths because they couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t believe her figures. By plotting these graphs, she revealed the appalling truth…

The film didn’t mention Florence Nightingale’s use of statistics and diagrams to make her case. That was a shame. Nowadays she is recognised as a pioneer of information design. Nor was there any mention of Mary Seacole who also provided support for soldiers during the Crimean war. For various reasons Seacole is not recognised, by the medical establishment, as a “proper” nurse. Nevertheless, her pioneering work is now better known.

The film was built around a series of music-hall scenes derived from Joan Littlewood’s amazing WW1 drama, Oh What a Lovely War. There a film version of this, by Richard Attenborough, that is well worth watching.

It was interesting to watch this against the present day rhetoric of war against the virus and the similar lack of resource for care workers and patients. We are 200 years from Nightingale’s birth! There’s a Nightingale museum at St Thomas’ Hospital, London.

If you are wondering why the government’s powerpoint graphics are so underwhelming read Ed Tufte’s essay about the structural problems of this software. You can download the essay, here

https://www.are.na/block/7201845

The Crimean war was the first war to be comprehensively photographed, by Roger Fenton. You can see his images online. The war was also one of the first, along with the US Civil War in which the machinery of war had become bigger, faster and more dangerous…

The BBC showed a great film documentary about the life of Lee Miller. You can watch it, here

Miller is most famous, nowadays, as a female war photographer .

She was famously photographed in Hitler’s bath tub, and as part of the advance-guard of the US army moving towards Berlin. Hours earlier, Miller had been part of the group that liberated the concentration camps…

Lee Miller lived the whole of her life in the front-line: as model, muse, surrealist and as house-photographer for Conde Nast’s, Vogue. Born in the USA, she moved to Paris and became part of the bohemian surrealist circle, where she was muse to Man Ray and others.

Well worth watching.

Philip Kaufman (1978) Invasion of the Bodysnatchers

Albert + David Maysles (1975) Grey Gardens

A fly-on-the-wall long-form documentary film about what happens when people are locked-down together for too long.