Biography
Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was 7 years old when his family moved to Philadelphia, in the black neighborhood of "Brick Yard". He started playing the banjo with his father, then he studied piano and saxophone at the same time as he did his secondary studies at Germantown College. He entered university, got into theatre, frequented novelists and poets like Leroy Jones, and wrote his first play "The Communist", an allegory on the situation of black Americans. At t...
Known For
Complete Filmography
Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues
2022
as Self (voice) (archive sound)
An intimate and revealing look at the world-changing musician, presented through a lens of archival footage and never-before-heard home recordings and...
Monk & Pannonica: An American Story
2022
as Self
Paris, 1954. The story of the meeting, known thanks to the fortuitous discovery of a forgotten notebook, full of notes and photographs, between a whit...
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
2019
as Self - Musician
An immersive look at the eventful life and brilliant artistic career of visionary American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991).
Foreign Office
2015
Musician
Foreign Office focuses on the period during which Algiers – between 1962 and 1972– became the “mecca of revolutionaries”, hosting representations of m...
The Sound Before the Fury
2014
as Self
Following the uprising of inmates in the high security prison of Attica, in the state of New York, Archie Shepp launches, with a group of musicians ga...
Dark Gable
2011
At first glance, the pairing of veteran American saxophonist Archie Shepp and German pianist Joachim Kuhn seems an unlikely one. Performance at the Fo...
24 Bars
2007
as Marcus
It is Christmas Eve. Separated from her young son, Helly struggles for money. A solitary man, Didier pays her to play his fiancée for the night. But t...
Scala Milan AC
2005
Some teenagers sign up for the contest: "Describe your neighborhood", whose first prize is a trip to Milan. As the youngsters are football fans and fa...
Bless Their Little Hearts
1984
Original Music Composer
Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.
Archie Shepp: Je suis jazz... c'est ma vie
1984
as Self
Jazz legend Archie Shepp toplines this unique and informative documentary. It intercuts performance footage of Shepp with interviews where he speaks c...
Mystery Mister Ra
1984
as Self
Sun Ra, Archie Shepp and company in concert in Paris, 1984. Documents performances and rehearsals in Paris, France, 1984. It includes the compositions...
Imagine the Sound
1981
as Self
An examination, shown through both interviews and performances, of the avant-garde free jazz movement which reigned during the 1960s.
Ten for Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally
1971
Concert film documentary. The John Sinclair Freedom Rally was a protest and concert in response to the imprisonment of John Sinclair for possession of...
The Panafrican Festival in Algiers
1969
as Self
Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all acro...
Archie Shepp chez les Touaregs
1969
as Self
Archie Shepp Quartet - Warsaw (Poland) 1978
N/A
as Themself
Jazz Jamboree Warsaw 1978