Synopsis
When We Were Kings (1996) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM — one of the few sports films that works just as well for people who've never followed boxing. Directed by Leon Gast, it was shot in Kinshasa in October 1974 and finally edited two decades later, picking up the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
Muhammad Ali was 32 and widely written off. George Foreman held the heavyweight title and was ten years younger. Promoter Don King persuaded Zaire's president Mobutu Sese Seko to bankroll the whole thing — a five-million-dollar purse for each fighter. What became known as the Rumble in the Jungle also ran alongside a massive music festival: James Brown, B.B. King, and Miriam Makeba all performed in Kinshasa that week.
Gast caught something beyond the fight itself. Ali comes across less as an athlete and more as a political and cultural force — a man who arrived on the African continent and clearly felt something shift. Spike Lee, Norman Mailer, and George Plimpton appear as commentators throughout. Stream When We Were Kings (1996) online on iFILM.
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