Full Description
This fascinating documentary retraces the life of a legendary figure whom Louis Armstrong himself nicknamed the "White Louis Armstrong," a wandering Jew who moved through the history of Jazz, Europe and the Soviet Empire. Eddie Rosner was famous throughout the world, then suddenly forgotten. Born in 1910, in a Polish-Jewish family, Rosner quickly became a child prodigy as a classical violinist. He studied to be a conductor at Berlin's Music Academy, but felt increasingly drawn to music developed by African Americans, which had a particular resonance for many European-Jewish musicians. When the Nazis took power in Germany, Rosner fled eastward to the Soviet Union. There he became a heroic German refugee, consecrated by Stalin as a State musician. After the war, Stalin accused him of "rootless cosmopolitanism" (the crime of being Jewish) and sent him to Siberia. Through rare documents, extraordinary film archives and astonishing accounts from Rosner's contemporaries, French director Pierre-Henry Salfati and Russian writer Natalya Sazonova chronicle the moving and glorious adventures of an endearing and generous man, who had it all and lost everything - except his love of jazz. Eddie Rosner, jazz trumpetist, first jazz player in communist world.
