Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story

“Jazz Fest” doesn’t just chronicle the growth of an annual series of concerts. It’s also the story of a city...an image refracted through the lives of Africans, Cajuns, Native Americans and others who make up Louisiana’s cultural gumbo.

The kind of electric, spirit-lifting music documentary that will make you want to reinvent your life so that you can live your entire existence in the heart of Louisiana.

The festival is an institution that had to survive, that had to come roaring back, and "Jazz Fest" makes the case for its next 50 years going forward.

The energy that the film puts out is vital and full of sap.

The history and commentary are fine, but the musical numbers are sensational.

A rollicking, heartfelt shout-out to (and glorified tourism ad for) a cherished fairground blowout that has long buoyed a routinely troubled city.

[D]oesn’t shy away from the diversity of the music at the festival, placing it within New Orleans’ unique history as a city that offered a home for displaced Acadians from Canada, Indigenous people and African-Americans after the end of slavery.

Its strongest moments, though, are when it weaves performance with story and talking heads, with archival footage from the festival’s past, with photography and even with glimpses of mouth-watering food.

...a celebration of the Festival, the city that hosts it, and more generally of good music, good food, and taking pleasure in life.

An uplifting documentary that argues that people from different backgrounds can fuse and harmonize.