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SUNDANCE 2021 REVIEW
SUMMER OF SOUL (Or….When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
By Danny Munso
For 50 years, footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival – a series of concerts in the summer of 1969 that played host to over 300,000 people – sat buried. While the other music festival that took place that summer – maybe you’ve heard of Woodstock? – had multiple bidders for its footage, the Harlem Cultural Festival had none and so its performances by icons like Stevie Wonder, Sly & the Family Stone, Nina Simone, The Staples Singers, B.B. King, Gladys Knight & The Pips and more were briefly lost to time. As metaphors go, this one is a bit too on the nose.
While there’s no curing that injustice, perhaps we can instead look for a silver lining. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) – the debut film by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, drummer for the legendary Roots crew – feels best viewed through the lens of today, shining a spotlight on what it meant to be a Black American in 1969 and drawing parallels to what it means to be Black today.
The music is plentiful and special enough for this to have simply been a concert film but as Knight eloquently puts, “it wasn’t just about the music.” It’s the world around the festival that takes center stage. Gone were Dr. King, Malcolm X and both Kennedy’s, all by assassin’s bullets. The Vietnam War was still raging. The Black Panther Party were present on the festival grounds providing free security because the NYPD refused. And almost unbelievably, one day of the concert took place during the Apollo 11 moon landing with Neil Armstrong putting boots on the lunar surface in the middle of the event.
Yet the film is at its best when it finds a way to marry these landmark historical moments with the music. This happens in the film’s high point, a duet between Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson on “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” sung in tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King. While introducing Staples and Jackson to the audience, Reverend Jesse Jackson tells the audience that this particular song was Dr. King’s favorite. It is quite something to witness Staples and Jackson sing that song as Thompson has the present-day Reverend Jackson recount to the camera how he was only inches away from Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis.
While the 50 years of perspective mostly aids the material, what was lost in that period were a lot of primary figures integral to the footage we’re seeing. Gone are festival creator Tony Lawrence, Sly, Nina, The Temptations’ David Ruffin and others whose views would have been invaluable. None of this is Thompson’s fault of course but that perspective is missed all the same.
Thompson brilliantly bridges the 50-year gap in certain scenes by having some of the festivals performers and attendees watch the footage on camera, the glow of the projector alight on their faces. For most it’s an emotional experience, best summed up by one festival goer who profusely thanks Thompson for confirming that everything he had thought about the festival since that summer in 1969 had really happened and that he wasn’t making it up in his head. Now, thanks to Thompson and his team, the rest of the world can view this historic gathering as well.
For more info on Summer of Soul, visit its official Sundance page HERE.
DIRECTED BY: Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thmopson
PRODUCED BY: David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent, Joseph Patel
This year the Sundance Film Festival is online – which means you can join in on the fun from anywhere in the world! While some films are sold out – tickets do become available sometimes at the last minute so make sure browse the catalog for a film you’d like to see and check for ticket availability here.
Want to read some interviews with today’s top storytellers? We hope you’ll check out our in-depth interviews or read a cool screenplay in its entirety in Backstory Magazine! You can read us on a desktop/laptop or via our iPad app. You can see Issue 42’s Table of Contents – or we hope you will consider – Subscribing or buying a single issue!
If you decide to subscribe – please use code: SAVE5 to save $5 off your one year subscription in the checkout cart on our website. Your login credentials will work both on a desktop/laptop or via our iPad app.