Barbara Thompson: Playing Against Time(2012)

Barbara Thompson: Playing Against Time is a documentary about Britain's preeminent jazz saxophonist and composer, whose four-decade career earned her an MBE in 1997. That same year, Thompson received a Parkinson's disease diagnosis that threatened the physical precision her art demands. The film follows her creative and personal struggle against a condition whose symptoms are especially devastating for an improvising musician. Thompson's resilience and continued musical work form the emotional core of this portrait, capturing both the cruelty of her circumstances and her determination to keep playing. It's a moving study of artistic perseverance in the face of progressive illness.