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

Nice directorial debut by Questlove. Fine concert documentary, but it's the greater cultural questions that make this more memorable for me. We all know why this was forgotten to time while Woodstock and the Summer of Love dominate the zeitgeist and make eyes misty with reminiscences. Black history is often left to oral history and then gentrified. Fav scenes: folks challenging the spending on the space race (pre-1970 Whitey on the Moon); performer at the end reminding the crowd they're black.

It's an important documentary and the music definitely takes you away. That this footage has been salvaged seems kind of insane and it's used in such a compelling way, it's never boring to watch and the interviews in the middle of it all are amazing. Loved witnessing the raw passion the people had both for their message and their art as well as just listening to the music.

An insane find of lost footage with incredible performances, artfully assembled with talking heads providing rich if sometimes hyperbolic context. It is insane to me that Disney + has a movie in which Nina Simone tells an audience they need to be ready to kill their oppressors. I don't know if that just proves that every message is eventually commodified in our culture or what but it's kinda funny.

A work of love and frustration; that it exists at all is amazing, but it shouldn't have to be. The performances have their ups and downs, but you'll be guaranteed to find something here that'll make you want to clamour for a 12-hour Snyder cut. And yet Questlove manages to string it all together into a narrative; it's the changes that make it music.

Electrifying! Non-stop bangers, galaxy brain editing (Joshua L. Pearson). As exhilarating as anything else I watched in 2021.

Fascinating historical document; Questlove is to be commended for whittling down a gargantuan amount of footage to under two hours, while still capturing a flavour of the festival and the culture surrounding it. Inevitable comparisons to WOODSTOCK, but this doesn’t quite reach the all-encompassing societal portrait of its forebear, with the talking heads occasionally frustrating in their insistence on interrupting the brilliant musical performances on display. Still well and truly worthwhile.

Pretty great footage of pretty great music, but it doesn't become a pretty great movie just by adding some interviews in between. Didn't quite work for me.

Worth checking out but I wish less time was spent on telling us how important the festival was and more time was spent on the festival.

see it and see it LOUD

Summer of Soul is a great time capsule of this monumental festival with great music and great insight into it.

Heaven is full of brown faces.

Great music, loads of excellent footage and retelling of the way things were back then.

This is a great musical documentary - it showcases an event not well known of/by, for many and for fans of soul music, its a great find. Lots of energetic, vigorous performances by a wide range of successful performers (Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder, among many others), some of which share their memories of what happened when they performed at this event in Harlem in the 1960s. The sense of hope and optimism is clearly put across - as a white person, I feel frustrated and disappointed that there

What more could you want from a music doc? Great songs, fascinating history, thoughtful commentary. Very very glad this footage was found and restored and edited together with such care.

The thesis writes itself, given how crazy it is that this event was almost entirely forgotten. The music is great and it really brings you in.

Really nice. I love the music and smiled nearly the whole film. I get why the production came from an attendee and historical context angle but it's over-egged. I don't need to see a map of one person's journey to the concert for example. The performances are powerful enough to not need this kind of support. Less would be so much more in this case.

With a few notable exceptions (The Staples Singers, Gladys Night), the music itself is underwhelming, but the presentation (interviews have been weaved into the performances) is amazing.

1969 Harlem Müzik Festivali. 50 yıl sonra çıkan harika görüntüler, ses, müzik ruhu ve sanatçıları. Onları izleyen seyirciler. Bir devrimin susmayan ruhu. Başarılı, asi, provokatif ve güçlü. Filmin sonunda, festival belgelendi. Hey beyaz adam. Kendine gel sen kendine gel.

Solid music, but the talking heads didn't keep my attention throughout the whole thing.

who broke something

100 - Stevie Wonder

It's rare that an event of this size and significance is so thoroughly forgotten, so it's a real joy to see this.

I dig it.

Give Quest his Oscar!