This is a unique project by Martin Scorsese, a visual history of American blues, one of the most impressive documentary series of the last decade of the 20th century.
The project involved bluesmen Charles Barnett and Mark Levin, filmmakers Clint Eastwood, Mike Figgis, Richard Pierce, Wim Wenders, and one of the films was shot by Martin Scorsese himself.
They all had one common goal – to understand the soul of the blues, to turn to its origins and trace how this music gained weight and influence in North America and beyond. But each of the directors moved towards this goal in their own way.
The Blues series demonstrates the widest range of styles and moods from tender love to harsh iconoclasm. This is a musical journey in seven parts, charged with the energy of the blues, on which more than one generation of famous musicians grew up. The second film in the series tells about the amazing ability of blues to combine simple earthiness and high, almost sacred poetry. Drawing on the history of the genre and his own experience as a music lover, Wenders combined classic chronicles and his own documentary footage, archival recordings of blues classics and cover versions performed by modern pop stars in his fictionalized biographies.