USA / 1959 / 85mins / Documentary / English

The first major film statement on jazz and the granddaddy of festival films. Noted photographer Bert Stern filmed a virtual Who's Who of jazz and blues at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival: including Thelonius Monk, Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington and Mahalia Jackson.

Bert Stern

Bert Stern was born October 2, 1929. He was the son of Jewish immigrants and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After dropping out of high school at the age of 16, he gained a job in the mail room at Look magazine. He became art director at Mayfair magazine, where Stern learned how to develop film and make contact sheets, and started taking his own pictures. In 1951, Stern was drafted into the US Army and was sent to Japan and assigned to the photographic department. By the late 1970s Stern returned to the U.S. to photograph portraits and fashion. With Aram Avakian, he co-directed Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959), a documentary film record of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He passed away at the age of 83. Learn More

Aram Avakian

Aram "Al" Avakian was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1926 to Armenian parents from Iran and Soviet Georgia. He graduated Horace Mann School and Yale University before serving as a Naval officer on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. On the G.I. Bill after the war he went to France where he attended the Sorbonne. There he was part of a tight group of young friends who defined the American literary movement of 1950's Paris, including Terry Southern, William Styron, John P. Marquand, and George Plimpton. In 1953, Avakian returned to the United States and apprenticed under Gjon Mili who got him started in documentary editing. In his spare time Avakian took still photographs of the legendary jazz sessions his brother the jazz producer George Avakian recorded. He soon became a feature film editor and director. In 1958, he co-directed with Bert Stern, a filmed record of the Newport Jazz Festival. The result, Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959), which Avakian also edited, is credited with being "the first feature-film documentary of a music festival. Avakian directed the movie End of the Road (1970), which received an "X" rating for its graphic depiction of an abortion. For End of the Road, Avakian received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno International Film Festival. End of the Road is an early indie picture which bucked Hollywood conventions and was before its time. From 1983 through 1986, Avakian was chairman of the film department at State University of New York at Purchase. He passed away in 1987 at the age of 60. Arthur Penn spoke at Avakian's 1987 memorial. Francis Coppola and Terry Southern wrote letters about Avakian, which were read aloud, and Gerry Mulligan played his saxophone, as well as others. Learn More