Producer, Sunandan Walia Director, Yugesh Walia
This
film, which incorporates archival footage, interviews and performance captures
the social climate of the black urban jazz scene in England. One sees the striking
similarity between the black experience in the U.K and America - the prejudice,
the poverty, and the creativity.
Silver Shine is a portrait of a unique musician, Andy Hamilton, whose origins are in the Caribbean. His interest in music began as a child when he made his instruments from tin cans and sticks. When he was older he fashioned a saxophone completely from bamboo. His formal introduction to music came, as it does for many black musicians, from within the church.
Emigrating to Birmingham, England, in the mid-fifties, he organized the Blue Notes, a combo which has been playing for over thirty years. Andy's career has had its ups and downs, but one of his claim's to fame is the song, "Silver Shine," which he wrote for Errol Flynn in 1946. But his greatest influence has been through teaching jazz to a new generation.
26 min. Video or DVD. Sale $195. Video rental $55.
Filmakers Library
124 East 40th Street, NY, NY 10016
Phone 212-808-4980, fax 212-808-4983
e-mail: info@filmakers.com