Film

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

A concert film that spent fifty years in a basement: electrifying footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, reassembled by Questlove into something that plays like a joyous, righteous corrective to history. Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly Stone and more, shot with an intimacy that makes you feel the heat off the crowd. It's for anyone who loves music, and anyone who wants to understand why this particular erasure mattered.

TMDb rating7.6

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Amazing Grace2018

Aretha Franklin's 1972 gospel concert, filmed but unreleased for over forty years due to technical and legal snags — another electrifying archive rescued just in time, another testament to what almost vanished.

But No narration, no context, just raw performance — some viewers want the history lesson Summer of Soul provides.

Amazing Grace poster

Wattstax1973

The Stax Records answer to Watts, three years after the riots: a joyous, funky, politically alive concert film with Richard Pryor cutting between sets. Its direct cousin, tonally and historically.

But Rougher, less polished restoration than Summer of Soul — it feels more like a genuine 1972 artifact, warts included.

Wattstax poster

Woodstock1970

The festival happening the same summer, forty blocks and a world away — watch it right after Summer of Soul and feel the gap in whose story got told first.

But Three hours long, and its cultural centrality is exactly the thing Summer of Soul is arguing against.

Woodstock poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Save the Children1973no page yet

The literal sibling case: another Black cultural festival filmed live, buried by disinterest, and left unseen for decades — proof this wasn't an isolated erasure.

A concert documentary of Operation PUSH's 1972 Chicago benefit — Jesse Jackson, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, the Jackson 5 — shot the same era, shelved the same way, forgotten even more completely.

But Genuinely hard to find and rougher around the edges; this is the rarity Summer of Soul itself was rescued from resembling.

More like this (8)

20 Feet from Stardom2013

The unsung Black women who powered decades of hit records from just off-mic — a companion piece about recognition, credit, and who gets remembered.

But More talking-head structured, less of a pure sensory plunge than the festival footage.

20 Feet from Stardom poster

What Happened, Miss Simone?2015no page yet

A fuller portrait of the woman who tears through Summer of Soul with barely restrained fury — her genius, her politics, her cost.

But Heavier and sadder; this is a biography of struggle, not a celebration.

I Am Not Your Negro2017

James Baldwin's words, assembled from an unfinished manuscript, give the sharpest possible intellectual frame for the mood Summer of Soul captures on stage.

But Dense and essayistic rather than musical — a very different rhythm, more classroom than block party.

I Am Not Your Negro poster

The Last Waltz1978

Scorsese's gold standard for how to shoot a concert film — if you want to see the craft benchmark Questlove was working against, start here.

But A different world entirely: The Band's farewell, mostly white rock royalty, no political weight to speak of.

The Last Waltz poster

Standing in the Shadows of Motown2002

The Funk Brothers, the uncredited session players behind nearly every Motown hit, finally get their names in lights. Same theme: genius hidden in plain sight.

But More reverent and conventional in structure — less alive than the festival footage itself.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown poster

Rejoice and Shout2011no page yet

A sweeping history of gospel music, the root system under everything you hear at the Harlem festival — Mahalia Jackson and the tradition she came from.

But Broader and more academic, spanning a century rather than capturing one electric afternoon.

Trances1982no page yet

Same structural idea in a different costume: a documentary rescuing a suppressed, radical musical culture that a government would rather forget existed.

A trance-inducing Moroccan documentary following Nass El Ghiwane, the band whose politically charged music became the voice of a generation — Scorsese himself helped restore it.

But In Arabic with a wholly different musical language and context; asks patience from anyone expecting American soul and funk.

Soul2020

Same question asked in an entirely different medium — what does soul music mean, who gets to carry it, and what happens when the world nearly lets it disappear.

A Pixar fantasy about a Black jazz pianist chasing meaning through music and the afterlife — swap the register from documentary joy to animated metaphysics and the themes of legacy and Black musical soul survive intact.

But Family-animated and fictional rather than archival — a much gentler, more abstract treatment of everything Summer of Soul shows you as fact.

Soul poster

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