Semi-Random Thoughts about Improvisation, Jazz, and/or (a) Film in No Real Particular Order (Then Again, Maybe So)

In this essay, Brett Kashmere examines Ryan Tebo’s recent documentary Whoever Fights Monsters, a film which deals with the nature of improvisational music through a unique approach to the filmmaking process itself. Though the film features footage of eight contemporary improvisers doing their thing, which for some filmmakers would satisfy the improv quotient of a documentary on the subject, Tebo has gone many steps further than the standard for the genre: he has created a film that is not only about improvisation, but is itself constructed as an improvisation – or more precisely, as a particular improvisation. Tebo arrived at the structure for the film – right down to details of shot length – by patterning his audiovisual editing strategies after the structure of Ornette Coleman’s classic 1961 album Free Jazz. Kashmere explores Tebo’s process while offering insightful commentary on the relationships between jazz improvisation, filmmaking, and the way they have come together in this film. The result is a marvelous look into the potential for filmmakers to take the idea of “designing a film for sound” to levels rarely glimpsed in cinemas past or present.

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