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

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021, 118 min.) The 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, staged during the same summer as Woodstock, was largely ignored by the mainstream white media despite performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, The 5th Dimension and more. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s brilliant documentary places the found concert footage in the context of the 1960s: from the excitement of the NASA’s moon landing to the devastating assassinations of pioneers and political leaders like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and from the optimism of the civil rights movement to the destruction ofBlack neighborhoods in urban rioting.