Movies: Music history

Ye Xiang Lun, a talented piano player is a new student at the prestigious Tamkang School. On his first day, he meets Lu Xiao Yu, a pretty girl playing a mysterious piece of music....

This documentary chronicles the rise, fall, and rise again of the soft rock epitomized by artists such as Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Retroactively dubbed "Yacht Rock," t...

Chronicles the rise and fall of legendary blues singer Billie Holiday, beginning with her traumatic youth. The story depicts her early attempts at a singing career and her eventual rise to stardom, as well as her difficult relationship with Louis McK...

In this short subject (which mostly represents a departure from Disney's traditional approach to animation), a stuffy owl teacher lectures his feathered flock on the origins of Western musical instruments. Starting with cavepeople, whose crude implem...

The reasons the Beatles broke up are extremely well documented and even at the height of their animosity none of the band ever blamed Yoko Ono for it - so why is this still a thing?...

The story of James Cotton, harmonica powerhouse, whose music shaped blues and rock. Orphaned at 9, Cotton’s life tracks America’s history—from the post-depression cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta to being mentored by the original Delta bluesmen...

Think of early electronic music and you’ll likely see men pushing buttons, knobs, and boundaries. While electronic music is often perceived as a boys' club, the truth is that from the very beginning women have been integral in inventing the devices, ...

Two brothers reflect on their chaotic journey to stardom, as part of the legendary punk rock bands The Rezillos & The Revillos. Navigating friendships, fame, and fallouts....

Class Acts is a feature-length documentary tracing the genesis of Singapore's creative scene in the '90s through intimate conversations with its pioneering personalities. These are the stories of individuals who started creating with nothing, who pu...

The history of New York City's Apollo Theater in Harlem is given the full treatment....

Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk spans over 30 years of the California Bay Area’s punk music history with a central focus on the emergence of the inspiring 924 Gilman Street collective. This diverse group of artists, writers, organizers and...

A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring....

It’s the hit musical that changed Broadway forever and brought the genius of Lin Manuel Miranda to the attention of legions of fans across the world. A story of how a group of mavericks made an unlikely marriage of hip-hop and history to create the b...

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Art Kane, now deceased, coordinated a group photograph of all the top jazz musicians in NYC in the year 1958, for a piece in Esquire magazine. Just about every jazz musician at the time showed up for the photo shoot which took place in front of a bro...

Aided by archival footage and interviews with its key figures, this documentary delves into the history of Argentine rock music from its origins up to the mid-1990s....

On the edge of the 30th anniversary of punk rock, Punk's Not Dead takes you into the sweaty underground clubs, backyard parties, recording studios, shopping malls and stadiums where punk rock music and culture continue to thrive....

This is the inside story of the Freddie Mercury you never knew: a behind the scenes story focusing on the two years that changed his life, from the summer of 1985 at Live AID when he achieved his greatest musical triumph to the spring of 1987 when he...

The Compleat Al (a title parody/homage of the 1982 documentary ‘The Compleat Beatles’) is a mockumentary about the life of "Weird Al" Yankovic, the Grammy® award-winning master of musical parody and rock-and-roll comedy, from his birth to 1985. Altho...

Rock'n'roll was a man's world they say. The film documents the often ignored female impact on rock's history, from the groundbreaking guitar stylings of Memphis Minnie and Sister Rosetta to the gnarly singing of Big Mama Thornton. Musicians as differ...