Product Review

In 1950s Manhattan, a dingy, five-story wreck of a loft building becomes the home and obsession of the brilliant photographer W. Eugene Smith who leaves his family and moves there to live the artist s life. Smith, crashing after a stellar but frustrating career at LIFE Magazine, wires the building for sound and captures daily life at 821 Sixth Avenue in thousands of pictures and end- less hours of audio tape. Over eight years in this place in New York s wholesale flower district, jazz players gather all night, every night, for freewheeling jam sessions both hot and cool; Thelonious Monk comes by to rehearse for a famous concert; Hall Overton emerges as a jazz guru; and a gifted drummer named Ronnie Free finds and loses his footing in the jazz world. Smith stealthily documents all that and more.

Special Features: Director Sara Fishko in conversation with Leonard Lopate | Trailer