It is a good name for a jazz club, because it implies musical dialogue. According to posters, Chet Baker and the fictional jazz musician “Singleton” will perform there. An aspiring guitar and a competing piano player also want to play there, but first they will have to pass an audition in the animation collective Morgane Duprat’s short film Call and Response, which screened during the 2022 Fantasia Film Festival.
Call and Response really is a short short, but it is loaded with style. Basically, the busking guitar player and a piano stylist stuck in a depressing bartending gig audition for a chance to play on a bill with Singleton. They start out interrupting each other, but they find a groove when they start playing together.
The musicians, including Raphael Faigenbaum on piano and Paul de Robillard on guitar, give us some swinging up-tempo bop that sound very 1960s-era appropriate. When they come together, the film explodes in color, but somewhat ironically, the early noirish black-and-white sequences look cooler and jazzier.
Regardless, any film that proclaims a love of jazz deserves a call-out, no matter how short, especially when the animation has so much flair. Recommended for jazz and animation fans, Call and Response screened at this year’s Fantasia.