Jazzist

This documentary about the history of Soviet and Russian jazz is entirely based on interviews, concert videos and chronicles, archival media clippings and photographs, music records of the jazz era. The film is a gift for the 85th anniversary of the outstanding musician Alexei Kozlov, filmed with public money on the initiative and with the support of Alexei Kozlov Club.

"Jazzist" is the first documentary about Soviet and Russian jazz. It all started at the end of the 1940s when the streets of Moscow became filled with the jazz-loving dissidents 'stiliagi' who sometimes referred to themselves as 'shtatniki' — young men were wearing wide-shouldered jackets while women had their hair coiffed into a bouffant. One of these people was Aleksey Kozlov, who later, in the 1960s, took his saxophone and started playing the music of the fat people — jazz.