1969 - I was dropping out of college to start a revolution

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2021

#18 : Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Questlove’s magnificent documentary of the forgotten 1969 Harlem cultural festival gives moving context to rediscovered footage of Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone et al.

I have heard of this film, but only through the plaudits it gained in various "best of 2020" lists.  It tells quite an unbelievable story - over the course of 6 weekends in the summer of '69, a series of concerts with put on in Harlem featuring artists such as Stevie Wonder, BB King, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson and Sly & The Family Stone.  They played in front of crowds of up to 50,000 people and the whole thing was filmed.  So, obviously, the film then sat in a basement for 50 years, not watched by anyone.  And then, somehow (more on this later), the footage came to Questlove's attention and he decided it deserved to brought to wider attention.  

And you know what?  He was absolutely right!

Overall, there is an embarrassment of riches of concert footage here - it's quite amazing.  Stevie Wonder is ace - I suspect I did know he could play drums, but I don't think I've ever seen it and, as with his piano work, the man is really quite something.  Nina Simone’s performance was impressive with incredible piano and voice work - both of which were nearly as impressive as her earrings.  Gladys Knight rocked it - but her Pips had the snazziest moves you've ever seen (and shared one mic between the three of them - no diva behaviour here).  On the slightly less well known front, Dinizulu was REALLY quite something and I’d never heard of Sonny Sharrock either - he lays down some impressive guitar work.  The jazz flute footage of "Chain Of Fools" is certainly quite something as well (but I'll never need to see it again).  And Sly & The Family Stone’s “Higher” is a great way to end the film - the crowd loved that a lot.

And before we go anywhere else, let me just get it out of my system and say that there are some mean cats in sharp threads here, you dig?  I'm allowed to say that, right?!?

Anyways, intertwined with the concert footage, we have current day reminiscences from the performers - Gladys is 78 now and looks fine and has a very nice line in humility.  As does Mavis Staples at a very sprightly 82 (and she's still touring!).  Stevie also gives his thoughts, but he's a mere 72 so I"m not sure we should pay much attention to the youngster (he was 19 at the time!).  There's also a lovely bit where two members of The 5th Dimension watch their footage for the first time in half a century and reminisce about those days - it's just gorgeous and heart-warming.  A different kind of performer that's also included is the Rev Jesse Jackson - and he could really work the crowd back then.

As well as the performers there are some fascinating other talking heads on the film - Rev Al Sharpton, Lin Manuel Mirand and Charlayne Hunter-Gault who is someone I knew nothing about, but she’s lead quite the life!  There's also some lovely clips (which open and close the film) of Musa Jackson, who is a guy who was there as a 5 year old, but always kinda wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing - and when they show him some footage it’s as if it’s suddenly validated his entire life.

My concern watching this was that it was going to be tricky to describe it as a great film.  It’s certainly a film with great content - I think anyone would struggle to make a terrible film given the riches on offer here.  But, the footage is linked together well with many interesting sub-sections focussing on different themes including the festival organiser, the Mayor of New York at the time, the death of MLK, different drumming styles and how the colour of your skin affected your view of the moon landing.  Additionally, if you read up on the film there is some cracking footage that was omitted - it must have killed them to do so (it sounds like all of Stevie Wonder's set is worth watching) but they certainly haven't thrown this together without thinking about it.  So the film is elevated above merely being "great concert footage" to achieve a lot more than that.

The one area that I think the film is lacking is explaining how the concert footage came to be made into this film - it tells us that the cameraman tried to sell the footage but no-one was interested, which is the reason for the low profile of the festival since it happened.  But it never explains how it came to Questlove's attention and the work that he had to do to get the film made - I suspect that it's just being modest, but I'd prefer that they were slightly less modest about the whole thing.

If you like the 60s scene, black music of any kind or just vintage concert footage of people you will know about and people you won't, then you absolutely have to watch this film - it's quite simple AMAZING and I just loved it!  Thank you, Questlove.

At the time of writing, it's available to watch on Disney+ and is well worth your time to check out.  It's also worth mentioning it won a BAFTA, an Oscar and a Grammy, so I'm not alone in my opinion!

#19 - A very fine film indeed
=#17 - Not quite a light-hearted romp