MOVIE · 2021

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

117 min

In the summer of 1969, hundreds of thousands gather in Harlem for the Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts that turns a city park into a stage for Black music, pride, and political expression. The film builds from long-unseen footage of those performances, showing the crowd, the joy, and the sense of history unfolding in real time. As the music plays, the documentary widens the frame to the pressures surrounding the festival: a country in upheaval, a culture insisting on being seen, and a landmark event that was largely pushed out of the broader story of that era. Directed by Questlove, it connects the performances to the moment that made them necessary.