Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)(2021)
dir. Questlove
The festival history forgot for fifty years.
Where to watch: Hulu; also rent on most platformsLetterboxd ↗
In the summer of 1969, 300,000 people went to Harlem's Mount Morris Park for the Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of free concerts with Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson and others. The footage sat in a basement for fifty years. Questlove cuts it together with interviews with the people who were there. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
Why it’s here
The film recovers a piece of Black history that the mainstream skipped while Woodstock got the myth. What's punk is the recovery: the question of who decides which summer gets remembered. What's pedagogical is the way it ties music to the politics of the year, from the Panthers to the moon landing. It sits next to I Am Not Your Negro and Hale County in the catalog's picks.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- North America
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
A Black girlhood in verse — history you can feel.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
bell hooks
Who gets to count as a woman?
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
Phillip Hoose
She refused first. History forgot her anyway.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
She wrote herself alive. They tried to erase it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Dear Martin
Nic Stone
Letters to MLK from a kid in handcuffs.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
Angela Davis
Palestine. Ferguson. Prison. One struggle, many fronts.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
March: Book One
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell
The blueprint for nonviolent revolution.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Schoolhouse Burning
Derek W. Black
Public schools are the backbone of democracy.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST