Watch Ed Bland’s Only Film ‘The Cry of Jazz’ (1959) on the "Fantastic Ingenuity of the Negro in America"

One of the 25 films to be inducted for preservation in the 2010 National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (Spike Lee’s "Malcolm X" was on the short list that year), is the experimental film "The Cry of Jazz" – a fascinating 34-minute critical analysis of Jazz music, directed by Ed Bland (an African American), his only film.

He went on to a career as a composer, arranger, and producer for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, and on films like "A Raisin In The Sun," "Ganja And Hess," and "The Cool World."

Shot on 16mm black-and-white with really no budget, and a volunteer cast and crew, the film is essentially a thesis on the…

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