MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS
A FEATURE FILM
"...As much a visual poem as it is a documentary."
DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE
"...one of the best jazz documentaries ever assembled... a singular viewing experience."
Byron Coley, The Wire : Adventures In Modern Music
"This is filmmaking that helps remind us of the profundity of our most basic senses, and the rhythm that guides and glides with them."
Matt Krefting
"Like Graves's music, the film is uncompromisingly original in form, but it teaches us to watch and enjoy it."
Pooja Rangan, author, Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary
MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS is the first ever feature-length portrait of renowned percussionist Milford Graves, exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity.
Graves has performed internationally since 1964, both as a soloist and in ensembles with such legends as Albert Ayler, Giuseppi Logan and Sonny Sharrock. He is a founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz, and he remains one of the most influential living figures in the evolution of the form.
The film draws the viewer through the artist’s lush garden and ornate home, into the martial arts dojo in his backyard and the laboratory in his basement - all of this just blocks from where he grew up in the housing projects of South Jamaica, Queens.
Graves tells stories of discovery, struggle and survival, ruminates on the essence of 'swing,' activates electronic stethoscopes in his basement lab to process the sound of his heart, and travels to Japan where he performs at a school for children with autism, igniting the student body into an ecstatic display of spontaneous collective energy.
Oscillating from present to past and weaving intimate glimpses of the artist’s complex cosmology with blistering performances from around the globe, MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS is cinema full of fluidity, polyrhythm and intensity, embodying the essence of Graves’ music itself.
Jake Meginsky / Director
Neil Young / Co-Director
INTERVIEW WITH MILFRORD GRAVES: FROM LEARNING THE LANGUAGE WITH CHINESE TEACHERS ONLINE TO MARTIAL ARTS
That was 1977, though, and I was simply content to be in Japan and surrounded by the people and environment I was at the time. Here I am performing a small demonstration in the Far East. I learned Chinese with the aid of Chinese teachers online in order to obtain a sense of Far Eastern culture.
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