A new documentary film, The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith, will have its first screenings at DOC NYC on November 13 and 16. Produced by WNYC Studios in association with Lumiere Productions, the film explores the 1957-65 New York City jazz scene as documented by the late Life Magazine photographer W. Eugene Smith in his Sixth Avenue loft. According to a press release, the film combines “tens of thousands of photographs with several thousand hours of sound recordings.” The W. Eugene Smith Archive gave first-time director Sara Fishko (WNYC's award-winning radio host and producer and Emmy Award winning film editor) open access to curate audio and still pictures of musicians including Thelonious Monk, Hall Overton, Zoot Sims, Freddie Redd and Jimmy Giuffre.

According to the press release, “The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith, the first film to be produced by WNYC Studios, takes viewers on a deep dive into the non-residential (and illegal) living space at 821 Sixth Avenue, which had become a hangout for jazz musicians, both known and obscure, who would play and mingle there after hours. Smith left his family and his job, moved into the building, wired it for sound from the ground floor to the top, and began recording on 1/4 inch tape the sounds of jam sessions, rehearsals and bull sessions, as well as the radio and TV programs he listened to most of the day and night. He also shot his largest body of photographic work in and around and out the window of what became known as the Jazz Loft. The film uses selections from that audio and those photos, along with newly photographed interviews with participants, archival footage and re-creations to tell the story of those years in New York, and something of the world Smith had come from before his Loft years.”

Among those heard discussing the Jazz Loft in the film are:

· Sam Stephenson, author of The Jazz Loft Project (Knopf, 2009) who discovered the Jazz Loft tapes piled in a corner of Smith's photo archive at the Center for Creative Photography, and set about untangling, studying and sharing the stories he found inside the boxes.

· Carla Bley, jazz pianist, vocalist and composer, who went there after her day job as the cigarette girl at Birdland.

· Steve Reich, iconic contemporary composer, who had composition lessons there with Hall Overton, the dynamic Juilliard teacher, composer and jazz arranger.

· David Amram, film composer, performer, author and raconteur who came to New York and asked the question, "Where's the jam session?" - and found the answer in this building.

· Jason Moran, current jazz pianist and composer, who looks back to that time and derives inspiration from it through Smith's pictures and tapes.

· Patrick Smith, a young teen when his father, the revered photographer W. Eugene Smith, moved into the beat-up old building in the Flower District.

· Bill Pierce, photographer, who had the job of greeting his famous boss W. Eugene Smith's "groupies" at the door of the building each morning.