The footage has been found, but the movie’s been lost. Sometimes these archival-footage documentaries don’t know what they’ve got. But it’s once you’re there, engulfed in it, that you trust Thompson’s strategy. It’s all been cooking before this midway moment. But no jolt compares to what happens in the middle of this thing, which is simply - though far from merely - footage from the 1969 edition of the Harlem Cultural Festival, footage that Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove, has rescued and assembled into nearly two-hours of outrageous poignancy. King and Ray Barretto and Gladys Knight & the Pips, in top, electric form. The movie’s got Sly and the Family Stone and B.B. It’s a movie that nears its end with Nina Simone doing “Backlash Blues” in a boxing match with the keys of her piano, her hair indistinguishable from the conical art piece affixed to her head. There’s no shortage of system shocks in “ Summer of Soul.” This is a concert movie that basically opens with a 19-year-old, pre-imperial-era Stevie Wonder getting behind a drum kit and whomping away - sitting, standing, kicking, possessed.
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