Dingo

The chance landing of world-touring jazz star Billy Cross (played by Miles Davis), followed by an impromptu performance by his band at a remote desert airstrip, becomes a life-changing event for a ten-year-old boy growing up in a tiny town lost somewhere in Western Australia. This is a moving story about the power of music – or, more broadly, the power of art and its ability to shape a human life. It is also a story about how “hard it is to be a jazz prophet in your own Poona Flat”.

Dingo is the only feature film in which Miles Davis appeared as an actor, apart from a brief role on television in Miami Vice. He does not so much play a fictional character as a version of himself – a great jazz star, but also a wealthy and eccentric artist. The trumpeter Billy Cross has withdrawn from musical life because of burnout and a loss of inspiration, a clear echo of Davis’s own biography and his years of silence. When he meets the film’s protagonist again years later, the encounter becomes the spark that draws him back to the stage. The film is accompanied by an excellent score, also released as an album, by Michel Legrand and Miles Davis, with trumpet parts performed by Miles Davis and Chuck Findley.

Jerzy Szczerbakow

Rolf de Heer (b. 1951) – Dutch Australian director, screenwriter and film producer. He immigrated to Australia with his parents at the age of eight. He graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney and quickly became one of the leading figures in Australian art cinema. In 1991, he directed Dingo, the only film starring legendary jazz musician Miles Davis as an actor. De Heer’s subsequent films have been showcased at major international film events, including the Cannes and Venice film festivals.

23rd New Horizons IFF Catalogue

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