Winner – Best Mid-Length Documentary Award
Eccentric jazz visionary Thelonious Monk is in Paris in 1969, seemingly eager to participate in a taping of Jazz Portrait, a French television program. But as the interview gets underway, the interviewer's autocratic and arrogant style ignites a conversation that is agonizing to watch, yet impossible to turn away from. Monk crackles with quiet ferocity in the face of the interviewer's thinly veiled condescension in one moment, unleashing his exhilarating musical talent in the next. Rewind & Play takes us behind the scenes to experience Monk at his peak while offering an indictment of the white male gaze that dominates art criticism and media to this day. Award-winning director Alain Gomis wields this trove of unaired archival footage in a manner that demands one listen between the lines. Denae Peters