During the same summer as Woodstock, over 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, celebrating African American music and culture, and promoting Black pride and unity. The footage from the festival sat in a basement, unseen for over 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America's history lost—until now.
Stevie Wonder Lin-Manuel Miranda Chris Rock Tony Lawrence Nina Simone B.B. King Abbey Lincoln Mavis Staples Mahalia Jackson David Ruffin Sly Stone Hugh Masekela John V. Lindsay Ray Barretto Herbie Mann Mongo Santamaría Questlove Luis Miranda Walter Cronkite Malcolm X Martin Luther King Jr. Robert F. Kennedy Richard Nixon John F. Kennedy Jesse Jackson Moms Mabley Max Roach Fidel Castro Redd Foxx
Davis Guggenheim Jon Kamen Jonathan Silberberg Beth Hubbard Nicole Stott Rocky Collins Dave Sirulnick Ruth Johnston Jody Allen Jannat Gargi Jen Isaacson Laurene Powell Jobs
Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Summer of Soul (...or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Summer of Soul (…or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Summer of Soul, 썸머 오브 소울, 靈魂之夏（或是"當革命不能搬上螢光幕"）, 靈魂之夏, サマー・オブ・ソウル（あるいは、革命がテレビ放映されなかった時）, 축제의 여름 (... 혹은 중계될 수 없는 혁명), Summer of Soul (...O, Cuando La Revolución No Pudo Ser Televisada), L'été de la soul, Summer of Soul (…ou quand la révolution n'a pas pu être télévisée), A lélek nyara, 소울, 영혼, 그리고 여름, Summer of Soul (...ou, Quando a Revolução Não Pôde Ser Televisionada), Summer of Soul (...Ou, Quando a Revolução Não Pôde ser Televisionada), Лето соула, Літо соулу, 灵魂乐之夏
Politics and human rights Humanity and the world around us Song and dance band, songs, concert, musician or lyrics artists, biography, musician, songs or emotional singing, musical, songs, tune or lyrics documentary, fascinating, sad, emotional or heartbreaking political, democracy, documentary, president or propaganda Show All…
Black is beautiful, black people are beautiful, and this film is one of the greatest testaments to that beauty I have ever seen.
The same summer as Woodstock 1969 a series of free concerts were held in Harlem's Mount Morris park that featured: Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, BB King, The Staples Singers, Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and The Pips, and David Ruffin among many others and was attended an audience of 300,000 black people. The fact that footage of this concert was lost in someone's basement for fifty years and that virtually no one, save for the attendees remembers that this took place is a stunning cultural atrocity. It's astonishing if you go back and watch the Woodstock concert film or Gimme Shelter, just how unlistenable and trash most of the performances were compared to this show of…
Some of the footage in here is unbelievable. It makes you wonder how many great performances and momentous events have been lost to history.
Questlove is just too damn talented.
I'm just going to go ahead and make the claim that this is the best edited concert doc ever. Surely the complete performances - nevermind the complete sets - are excellent and I look forward to the multi-volume extended edition; but Questlove and his music-savvy editing team seem to understand exactly how much music is enough to make the individual case for that performer's electrifying talent and the broader case about what the concerts themselves set out to accomplish. Just an incredible work of craftsmanship in addition to being a vital document.
The wonderful music makes the argument, the movie around the footage fails to do. So much questionable editing and overuse of bad talking heads (some of it of really questionable music TV doc level). It often seems to be taking a clue from its main argument and just let it all get lost in the noise. Still, Questlove should get plenty of credit for recovering this footage and using his clout to make it available, I just wish he trust it more. In some ways my frustations with Summer of Soul mirrors some of my frustrations with contemporary discourse, it is an act of recovery that seems to believe a huge win is just getting this material and give it the most tepid mainstream hack treatment, like "making it televised" is the win, when it deserves so much more.
as a film archivist, nothing is more rewarding than watching these subjects have the opportunity to see footage of something they experienced fifty years ago and never saw, or even knew existed; an overwhelming discovery
The sad part about modern times is that there are undoubtedly comparable festivals, but the glut of content dilutes their impact and potential for posterity, making what was once timeless and immemorial now dispensable. In contemporary life, we are simply weighed down by overabundance. Memories of the great spectacles of this age will be largely forgotten, fragmented into tiny niches, filed away into personalized jpeg and wav files, and ultimately destined to survive in catalogues as mere novelties. Today’s great concerts will endure in the shadows, devoid of the mythological grandeur that arose from the mono-cultural scarcity of the late 60s.
The recovered footage from Summer of Soul is certainly a remarkable find. Beyond its service as a documentation of…
Questlove!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Logging this because I have now indeed watched it once but I'd like you to know that, because it gave me such an intense knot in my stomach remembering just how alive live music makes me feel and everything in this documentary is just plain *magic*, I have just rewound it to the beginning and am now watching again
such a balm!!! I love it so much. the people are beautiful. the music is beautiful. my experience watching it was so joyful. it’s paired with AMAZING GRACE (2018) in my mind.
