Doing the arthouse rounds in the US and picking up plenty of favourable reviews is a new film about photographer W.Eugene Smith and his fabled loft in New York, a mecca for jazz musicians.

Smith left behind his job, home and family in the late 1950s, and moved into an illegal loft space in a run-down Sixth Avenue building near the Empire State Building to capture the jam sessions taking place next door – informal gatherings and rehearsals that regularly featured the greatest musicians of the era including Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, and Roy Haynes.

Smith wired the space with microphones and set up his cameras to capture the scene, taking roughly 40,000 photos and recording nearly 4,000 hours of audio over the following eight years, creating a priceless chronicle of the after-hours jazz world the public had never seen. The film was written and directed by WNYC's Fishko, and is the first film to delve into Smith’s vast archive and expose one of the most compelling untold stories in jazz. The film features interview segments with Moran, composer/pianist Carla Bley, Thelonious Monk Jr., and vocalist David Frishberg, among others.

More on the film in the trailer, above