SAVING JAZZ
Sunday August 27, 2006 at 10pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld

The central character in Saving Jazz is Herman Leonard, a legendary 83 year old  Jewish photographer. Since the 1940s, Leonard has built an unparalleled record of Jazz in America. Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and hundreds of other pioneers have been captured by Leonard, working over the decades from his base in New Orleans -the city where Jazz was born - to photograph images which have defined the music and gained the status of icons.

As Hurricane Katrina approached, before fleeing the city, Leonard scrambled with a small group of his friends to save as many photos as they could, hustling them to the third floor of his home. But when the Hurricane struck, Leonard's studio, darkroom and home were flooded to a depth of 8 feet.

Leonard's manager Jenny Bagert returned after the hurricane, navigating by boat along streets which had become rivers to find thousands of Leonard's prints floating in the filthy water

6 weeks after Katrina, Herman Leonard came back to New Orleans for the first time since the hurricane to see for himself. Production was there to film that painful return, and to witness the beginning of his efforts to rebuild his archive and his life's work. Already he is planning to sell surviving prints to help with flood relief.  Even the surreal flood-melted photos from his archive set him thinking about new ways of recording the impact of Katrina.

The task of recovering Leonard's unique archive - and the story of Jazz - from the devastation of the city where the music was born is the central narrative of this film.

The film follows the photographer over the year since Katrina, recording the progress of his efforts to bring his pictures back from the floodwaters as the city struggles to rebuild and to reclaim its music. At the same time, Leonard is struggling to decide if he must leave the city that he loves.

Along with the story of Leonard's 50 years as a recorder of Jazz, the film will hear from some of Leonard's subjects: New Orleans-born Wynton Marsalis, America's most celebrated Jazz trumpeter and eloquent spokesman; Tony Bennett, a lifelong friend and fan of Leonard's pictures; and a range of New Orleans musicians.

From the bewilderment and chaos of the months after Katrina, through the defiance of Mardi Gras, to the frustrations of failed promises of rebuilding , Leonard's story - and the story of New Orleans's efforts to bring back its music and its musicians makes for a very different kind of film for the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.