My Name Is Albert Ayler 2006

"Kaspar Collin's portrait of the great saxophonist, who died in 1970, evinces a remarkable sympathy with its subject and his art... The ne plus ultra of free jazz, Ayler performed the musical equivalent of speaking in tongues: he left chord changes and swinging rhythms far behind and emitted great spiritual wails and shrieks from his horn. Collin expertly evokes the revolutionary impact of Ayler's arrival in New York in 1963, when an astonished John Coltrane yielded the bandstand to him... The stirring presence and fascinating anecdotes of such bandmates as the drummer Sunny Murray, the judicious, evocative use of archival footage of New York in the mid-60s, and a generous helping of the music itself combine to offer magical moments of a madeleine-like power, summoning up a vanished world... Though the end of the film seems rushed - its 79 minutes could have gone on for hours - it is nonetheless a cause for rejoicing." — Richard Brody, New Yorker