Play Your Own Thing: A Story of Jazz in Europe (2006)

The music documentary Play Your Own Thing provides a comprehensive history of European jazz. It explores the origins of the US-influenced jazz clubs after the Second World War, the first steps independent of American jazz and the various changes of direction that have repeatedly occurred in the search for that "own voice" that European jazz musicians have helped to form. Featuring the mastery of Chris Barber, Jan Garbarek, Juliette Greco, Stefano Bollani and Till Bronner, to name but a few, the film provides a wealth of styles in jazz. For his third documentary on jazz, filmmaker Julian Benedikt travelled to a wide variety of European countries in search of an all-embracing documentation of European jazz music. His storytelling is not overly sophisticated, nor does he simply reproduce the known clichés; rather the movie engages its audience with very personal impressions of European jazz, past and present.