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

Summer of Soul (2021) is Questlove's documentary concert film you can watch online on iFILM. The summer of 1969 had Woodstock, and it had the Harlem Cultural Festival — six weekends of performances that drew more than 300,000 people to Mount Morris Park. Nobody outside Harlem heard much about it, because the footage spent over fifty years sitting in a basement.

Questlove dug it out and built a film around it. Stevie Wonder, seventeen years old, takes over the drums. Nina Simone turns the crowd silent. Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Sly Stone, Hugh Masekela — the lineup runs through the documentary like a live setlist. Between performances, the film holds the moment: Martin Luther King had been dead for a year, Apollo 11 was landing that same weekend, American cities were still burning. The festival was a political act dressed as a party.

The film took the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It's the kind of film that makes you furious something this good was buried — and then grateful someone finally dug it up. Stream Summer of Soul (2021) online on iFILM.