
Canadian Premiere
Four snapshots from behind the rich music scene of New Orleans. Filmmaker Ben Chace (Wah Do Dem; Sin Alas) dips into four recording sessions—jazz, blues, soul, and more jazz—and allows the artists to share their stories, beginning with the Queen of Soul, the legendary Irma Thomas; then Benny Jones from the Treme Brass Band; King of the Blues, Little Freddie King; and finally, father and son, Ellis and Jason Marsalis, on piano and vibraphone, respectively.
Chace might have expanded any one of these vignettes into a feature-length documentary; instead he gives us a buffet, a taster, or a playlist if you will, and invites us to draw out the connections between these veteran African-American artists who found their métier making music long ago, but continue to create, compose, and inspire. The director is himself a musician, and it shows: there is a shorthand that musicians share and which underscores the sessions captured here. As for the music, you’ll want to get up and dance.
Media Partner
Community Partner
Irma Thomas, Ellis Marsalis, Little Freddie King, Benny Jones Sr., Jason Marsalis
USA
2021
English
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Georgia O'Keeffe: the Brightness of Light
Drawing on her copious correspondence and the world's leading scholars, this is a definitive documentary on the life and work of "the mother of American Modernism."
Shall We Dance?
Masayuki Suô's delightful and charming 1996 film was a box office smash and won 14 Japanese Academy Awards including Best Film. It's the story of a married salaryman who falls in love with... dance.
Drop Dead City
New York, 1975. The city is minutes away from bankruptcy and President Gerald Ford wants no part of it. Sanitation workers are on strike and cops are telling tourists it's not safe to visit. The town is going up in flames and they can't pay the firemen.
Inedia
Liz Cairns makes a mesmerizing feature debut that sees a young woman suffering from mysterious food allergies join a remote island community practicing alternative healing methods. She soon realizes that not everything is as it seems.
The Fugitive Kind
Sidney Lumet's movie brings together two of the greatest actors of the period, Brando and Anna Magnani, reason enough to check out this underrated poetical drama about a handsome musician who washes up in a small southern town.
Credits
Executive Producer
John Caulkins, Henry Kasdon
Producer
Ben Chace, Bill Ramsey
Screenwriter
Ben Chace
Cinematography
Nisa East, Bruno Doria, Zac Manuel, Sam Fleischner, Andrew Storrs
Editor
Ben Chace
Director

Ben Chace
Ben Chace has directed several independent feature films including Wah Do Dem (2010), which won the Jury Prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival, was shortlisted for Best Film at BFI London Film Festival and was listed in Artforum’s Top 10 Films of 2010. His follow-up Sin Alas (2016), the first American-produced feature filmed in Cuba since 1959, screened at AFI Latin American Film Festival and Curaçao International Film Festival Rotterdam and was distributed by Kino Lorber. Ben grew up in Providence, Rhode Island and attended NYU Gallatin School.
Filmography: Wah Do Dem (2010); Sin Alas (2016)