Keeping Time: The Life, Music, and Photographs of Milt Hinton was made by David G. Berger, Holly Maxon, and Kate Hirson. The film looks not only at Hinton's musical career, but at his photographic work. Hinton took over 60,000 photographs of the world of American music (including photographs taken at the famous 1958 Esquire gathering of jazz greats in Harlem) and of the evolution of American society, from the Jim Crow South onward, as seen by a traveling musician.

The film, which premiered in 2003 at the TriBeCa Film Festival, includes interviews with, among others, Amiri Baraka, Gregory Hines, Nat Hentoff, Quincy Jones, Branford Marsalis, Doc Cheatham, Joe Williams, and George Wein.

During Hinton's seven-decade career he performed with myriad great musicians, including Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Barbara Streisand, and almost all of the jazz greats, including Dizzy Gillespie (with whom he played in Cab Calloway's band).

Keeping Time is presented as part of PBS's Independent Lens series; check local listings for details.