Remarkable portrait of a pioneer of jazz: Jutta Hipp's courageous life journey from Leipzig into the wide world. FILM PREMIERE!

Jutta Hipp from Leipzig was an exceptional phenomenon: female, German and the first white jazz pianist in the USA at an international level. As an autodidact, she made an unprecedented career in the 1950s - from underground clubs in Leipzig to the clubs of the US occupying forces on Lake Tegernsee to the stage of the legendary Hickory House in New York. She was celebrated - as the first woman on the Blue Note label and, as it was called at the time, a "Fräuleinwunder" on the piano. But behind the glamor lay a story full of fractures, doubts and courageous decisions.

The ARTE documentary "Being Hipp" uses unpublished film and sound recordings, interviews with jazz greats such as Terri Lyne Carrington, David Amram, Thomas Herberer and Sheila Jordan as well as impressive archive material to paint a portrait of an extraordinary artist. The documentary tells of Hipp's early love of forbidden music in Nazi Germany, her escape to the West, the birth of her son Lionel and her meteoric rise in the American jazz scene.

But sexism, racism, self-doubt and alcoholism increasingly dominate her life. When she resists an affair with her agent, she falls out of favor - and falls silent. In 1960, she leaves the stage for good. She swaps music for a job in a textile factory and finds peace with herself.

"Being Hipp" is more than a portrait - it is a touching journey into the life of an artist who dedicated herself to the freedom of music, stood her ground against all odds and yet was broken by it.

(Note: The screening will be followed by a discussion moderated by Julia Hemmerling (Jazz Labor I MDR) with the director of the film, Anna Schmidt, and Ilona Haperkamp (musician and author of the Jutta Hipp biography "Plötzlich Hip(p)", to which all guests are cordially invited).