A few days ago, the documentary "Being Hipp - First Lady of Jazz" celebrated its premiere as part of the Leipzig Jazz Days. The film is a late homage to the Leipzig pianist Jutta Hipp - and at the same time a cultural-historical portrait of autonomy, artistic integrity and the political dimensions of a genre.

Anna Schmidt dedicates her documentary to Jutta Hipp, a woman who could have achieved a prominent position in the jazz canon, albeit at a high price. Born in Leipzig in 1925, the pianist was the first German jazz musician to be signed to Blue Note Records. In the mid-1950s, she was considered a sensation in New York before abruptly disappearing from the public eye.

After a brief biographical introduction, the director illustrates Hipp's life in fine strokes. Contemporary testimonies, such as photos from Hipp's life in Leipzig, archive footage of her playing the piano and original recordings in which the artist herself has her say, gradually replace the myth of "Jutta Hipp" with an approachable, down-to-earth person. Genre colleagues such as trumpeter Thomas Heberer, Lou Donaldson and David Amram classify her work. Amram, presumably unconsciously, underlines one of the reasons for Hipp's break with her music career: "Everyone loved her, not just as a beautiful woman." 

Being Hipp is not a nostalgic "what if", but a polyphonic reflection on structures. Jazz musicians and academics in particular vividly explain the factors that shaped Hipp's career. These include jazz researcher and trumpeter Ingrid Monson, drummer and composer Terri Lyne Carrington and Ilona Haberkamp, the biographer who rediscovered Hipp. Carrington describes jazz - especially for female instrumentalists - as a male domain in which women do not have the same support or the same network. Hipp's talent as a pianist, but also her uncompromising integrity, would have isolated her in this climate.

The film links Hipp's life with the political tenor of jazz. "Jazz is by its very nature anti-hierarchical and reflects a model of democracy," says Carrington, explaining Hipp's willingness to take risks. During National Socialism, jazz was banned as "degenerate music". In an audio recording, Hipp recalls: "I stole books from my mother and exchanged them for records and, of course, listened to the forbidden stations on the radio."

But Schmidt shows Hipp not only as a musician, but also as a versatile artist. Her talent for painting and drawing runs through the film as a second common thread. Former fellow students describe her as "more talented than anyone else at the academy". After fleeing the East - jazz was considered decadent even under Soviet occupation - she lives in West Germany, plays in American clubs, draws drink cards and learns from GIs. She falls in love with an African-American soldier and becomes pregnant. Her son Lionel is taken away from her, placed in a home and later adopted. Schmidt suggests that this experience had a lasting impact on Hipp's life and art: in her late landscape paintings, a mother with a child by the hand can be seen again and again in the background. 

But Hipp remains pragmatic and brave. In another recording, she talks about her departure for New York. Her father takes her to the ship and she tearfully asks him to leave "so that I can cry in peace in my cabin". In New York, she initially stays with Leonard Feather's family. He later dumps her when she refuses to return his advances. 

Schmidt tells this episode without sensationalism, but with unmistakable anger. Hipp's farewell to jazz begins where integrity becomes a career obstacle in a patriarchal system.

The camera lingers on atmospheric black-and-white shots of New York nightlife: jazz clubs, thick cigarette air, improvising musicians. Here, jazz is above all a backdrop. Hipp loses the joy of playing, increasingly turns to the bottle and finally withdraws. The film rejects tragic escalation and instead shows a woman who consciously chooses a different life. She works as a seamstress in a textile factory, appreciates the reliable income and the peace and quiet, paints, studies art again and wins prizes as a painter. Her biographer Ilona Haberkamp says in the film that she "seemed satisfied" at the end.

That is the great strength of Being Hipp. Anna Schmidt does not turn Hipp's biography into a legend, but rather a multi-layered portrait of the right to escape the narrative of success. The film shows how artistic freedom can sometimes only be found away from the stage.

Formally, the documentary convinces with its clever combination of archive material, music and interviews. The editing is rhythmic, never hectic. Between passages and pauses, a cinematic composition unfolds that breathes Hipp's art. The inclusion of younger musicians such as Clara Haberkamp, who reinterprets Hipp's pieces, builds a bridge between generations and reminds us that musical memory means work, also and especially for women. Being Hipp shows Jutta Hipp respect by neither glorifying nor pitying her.

Laura Gerlach