Event Date
Umbria Jazz Feast (2026) is an experimental documentary set during the 2025 edition of the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, the largest jazz festival in Europe. Rather than focusing on stage performances in formal venues, the film turns to the streets, where musicians and audiences meet in a more participatory and inclusive musical exchange. Filmed with handheld cameras and microphones placed within the crowd, it captures the listener’s perspective and the city’s living soundscape—voices, cicadas, birds, and traffic merging with music. Buskers, international performers, and Malian griots join in official events, streets, restaurants, and other public spaces, turning the city into instrument, stage, and resonant chamber. Structured around the cycle of light from night to sunrise and back, the film traces the festival’s twenty-hour daily rhythm and reveals the vibrant cross-fertilization between African-rooted American music and contemporary Italian culture.
Presented by: Professor Pierpaolo Polzonetti (UC Davis Department of Music) and the Department of French and Italian
Co-Sponsored by: UC Davis Global Affairs, Department of Music, Department of Cinema and Digital Media and the Davis Humanities Institute.