ATHENS – Three years ago, in June 2021, director John Alexander’s feature documentary movie ‘Little Satchmo’, revealing Louis Armstrong’s secret daughter made its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, where it enjoyed a sold-out and critically acclaimed opening at the Oscar-qualifying festival.

The debut coincided with the 50th anniversary of Louis Armstrong’s passing and introduced to the world Armstrong’s only child, Sharon Preston-Folta, whom Armstrong had claimed and supported his entire life yet kept entirely hidden from public view.

This year, after an extensive international release via PBS culminating with an Emmy award, the film is returning to Greece as it embarks on an encore tour throughout Eastern Europe. Little Satchmo will be shown at the Fluxus Museum on the Greek island of Paros the evening of September 1, as the opening night gala film of the inaugural Giddy Island Film Festival. The festival is founded by London-based filmmaker duo the Shakespeare Sisters (Soundtrack to ‘Sixteen’, ‘Much Ado’, ‘The Unreason’), currently in production on the feature film adaptation of Becky Albertalli’s bestselling novel ‘The Upside of Unrequited’.

Director John Alexander and producer JC Guest (‘Bender’, ‘This Is Love’) will attend the special presentation of Little Satchmo in Paros and will participate in a Q&A after the screening. Little Satchmo is based on Preston-Folta’s published memoir of the same title, detailing how Sharon, the product of a two-decade love affair between Satchmo and Harlem dancer Lucille ‘Sweets’ Preston, had no option but to harbor and conceal her identity for decades before making it public. In addition to complex themes of race, father/daughterhood, family, identity, and single-parent households, the story resonates on topics of finding one’s voice, family secrets, and relationships with fathers.

The National Herald communicated with Alexander about Armstrong, whose sole apparent tie to Hellenism is that he played at ‘the Greek Theatre’ with Ella Fitzgerald in Los Angeles. Regarding the interest of his fans and those who study him in Greece – the country has many gifted jazz musicians – he said: “It never ceases to amaze us how renowned Sharon’s father continue to be internationally. When talking about Little Satchmo in the states, occasionally young Americans have said words to the effect of ‘Louis Armstrong? Is that the guy who landed on the moon?’ While internationally, if you ask youth if they know who Louis Armstrong is, in any language, overwhelmingly the answer we’ve heard best translated into English would be ‘duh!’ For this reason it is very fitting that Sharon and her father’s story is showing so much in countries around the world.”

The director of the Little Satchmo then said, “we are so honored to be returning to Europe, and to Greece, yet again for this encore tour of Little Satchmo. The story and the film have touched many around the world, and it is beyond our most ambitious hopes and dreams how it continues to do so – across all language, cultural, and geographic borders. It speaks to the universality of Sharon and her father’s story, and I must admit a testament to our genuinely heartfelt storytelling. I have found that when our hearts are in our work, that spirit travels far and transmits to viewers everywhere.”

Preston-Folta attended the 2021 opening and Q&A in Thessaloniki to standing ovation along with associate producer Shawn Rhodes, and has since been awarded the coveted Emmy statuette for Outstanding Historical Documentary (‘Southeast’, 2023), as have her collaborators director John Alexander and producer JC Guest, late producer Lea Umberger, and Emmy/Grammy winner and nominee composer Eddie Korvin.

After screening in Paros, the filmmakers’ screening tour will continue through Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, and Romania, in September and October, before returning to Greece’s Peloponnisos International Documentary Festival in November. Little Satchmo is a sponsored project of the Southern Documentary Fund, executive produced by Sharon Preston-Folta, Emily Bonavia and Susan Houston, and is distributed by PBS International. For more information please visit: littlesatchmodoc.com.