About

Featuring an incredible line up of musicians from Sly and the Family Stone and Stevie Wonder, to Nina Simone and Gladys Knight, this electrifying concert film captures a breath-taking moment in African American history which charts a ground swell of empowerment, political engagement and celebration of blackness. Multi-talented musician-turned-director Ahmir Khalib ‘Questlove’ Thompson presents a moving cinematic account of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which took place over six Sundays from June to August 1969, in Harlem, New York. Over 300,000 people attended the festival, however, footage from the festival sat in a basement for over fifty years, thought to be lost to the annals of history and overshadowed by Woodstock which occurred during the same Summer. The footage includes goosebump-inducing performances, such as a funk-heavy Stevie Wonder playing keys with one hand while commanding the microphone, the Rev. Jesse Jackson doing call and response with the audience “I am Black! I am beautiful! I am proud!” and a documentation of an audience of boasting families, kids, people young and old joyously dancing and celebrating. Meticulously restored, with testimonies by those who were there and by those who were influenced, this documentary acts as a vital and life-affirming artefact, a social declaration, a response towards inequality, and as a transformative reflection of the enduring power that music and art conjures as a catalyst for change. TM

PG | Mild themes and drug references