Lin-Manuel Miranda simply will not leave me alone
Directed by Questlove
A grounded music film with an ensemble cast.
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.
Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is showing in 1 cinema in London - next screening Sunday 18 October at 12:00 at COLDHARBOUR BLUE.
Next screenings: Sunday 18 October.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda simply will not leave me alone
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 non stop classics that not just stand, but utterly vanquish the test of time and exist as a perfect crystal of this end of the sixties moment of possibility and pride but also deep grief and anger.There's a great part in this that contrasts the broader cultural reaction to the moon landing, which happened on the same day, with news interviews with the Harlem attendees who couldn't give less of a shit about it. FINALLY a good, entertaining movie to come out of Sundance this year.
It explores the historic 1969 cultural festival celebrating African American music and culture through newly uncovered archival footage.
It was directed by Questlove in 2021, marking his feature directorial debut.
Yes, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
