Annie Murphy’s Righteous Anger

MOVIES

A Festival Dream Deferred No More

How Questlove brought the Harlem Cultural Festival back to the screen after 50 years

By JONATHAN BERNSTEIN

QUESTLOVE WAS SKEPTICAL. In early 2019, the Roots’ drummer was approached by two Hollywood producers who claimed to have 45 hours of footage from a long-forgotten festival in Harlem that had included performances by Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, and other stars. Questlove, who’s renowned for his knowledge of music history, had never heard of the event. He had, however, become used to fellow crate-digging obsessives trying to one-up him with dubious facts.

“That’s really what I thought it was, ” the drummer, a.k.a. Ahmir Thompson, recalls of his frst meeting with producers Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein. “I thought these two were trying to gas me up for some Jimmy Fallon tickets. ”

When he watched the performances, he realized that not only was the footage real, but that the event it documented — the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival — was a profoundly important cultural moment. He ended up signing on to direct Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), one of 2021 ’s buzziest documentaries, to tell that story.

The concerts, which began in 1967, in Harlem’s Mount Morris Park, were drawing tens of thousands of fans by the summer of 1969, and served as a crucial space during a tumultuous time in black America. “The festival was a way to ofset the pain we all felt after MLK, ” the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who spoke at the festival, told ROLLING STONE in 2019. “The artists tried to express the tensions of the time, a ferce pain and a ferce joy. ”

Sensing the importance of what was happening, a local television director named Hal Tulchin flmed the concerts with a professional crew, but the footage would end up sitting in his basement for nearly 50 years. “Not only was the footage forgotten, it was overlooked, ” says Sasha Tulchin, Hal’s daughter. “It wasn’t wanted, and then it was forgotten. ”

Fyvolent, a veteran entertainment lawyer and producer, first learned about the Harlem Cultural Festival through a friend in 2006. For years afterward, he was told by others in the industry that making a flm about the festival would never happen. “They were like, ‘This is going to be too expensive, given the artists involved, ’ ” says Fyvolvent. “I heard that a lot. ”

After signing on as director, Questlove immersed himself in the source material by playing Tulchin’s 45 hours of footage on repeat. “The numberone question I had was,

The flm’s climax now belongs to Nina Simone, who performs “Young, Gifted and Black” and ofers a recitation from the Last Poets’ David Nelson: “Are you ready to smash white things, to burn buildings. . . . Are you ready to build black things?”

The performances in the flm present a vibrant, varied vision of lateSixties black musicality, from the New Age pop of the 5th Dimension to the jazz-rock experimentation of Sonny Sharrock to the drone-rock stylings of the Chambers Brothers. “We’ve been told that classic Vietnam-era iconic rock songs were by white groups, but they’re not, ” says Patel.

For Questlove, it was an angering experience to realize that if it had been given proper resources at the time, a flm on the Harlem Cultural Festival could have had the same wide cultural infuence as 1970’s Woodstock. “This could’ve been such an adrenaline boost to black music culture, ” he says,

“and it wasn’t allowed. ”

He points to Prince’s memoir, which includes a detailed remembrance of going to see Woodstock in 1970. “His dad could have took him to see this film, ” Questlove adds.

SOUL POWER Clockwise from left: Sly Stone performing as part of the Harlem Cultural Festival in July 1969; the 5th Dimension onstage for thei r performance at the festival earlier that summer; di rector Questlove

The very fact that these shows had been all but erased from the historical record became an urgent through line in the film. The Summer of Soul team demonstrates this, in part, by showing festival footage to their interview subjects and flming their reactions. Interspersed with the stunning performances are emotional shots of people like Harlem native Musa Jackson, who attended the festival as a fve-year-old.

At first, Questlove envisioned a fairly conventional cinema vérité concert-doc approach (à la Sydney Pollack’s Amazing Grace), building up to a feel-good fnale with Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples leading the crowd through the civil-rights-era anthem “We Shall Overcome. ”

Last year’s uprising against racism made him dig deeper. “ ‘That’s how Hollywood would end the flm, ’” Questlove recalls producer Joseph Patel telling him. “It would let people of the hook — like, ‘See, everything’s fne. ’ But that’s not what’s happening now. We’re not having a ‘Kumbaya’ moment. We’re protesting. ”

FLASHBACK

BIG-SCREEN BALLERS

As ‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’hits theaters on July 16th, we look back at some of the all-time great cinematic performances by NBA stars...and a few that bricked

By MARIA FONTOURA

10. Shaqui lle O’Neal

Kazaam 1996

Google Kazaam and a top autofi ll is “one of the worst movies ever?” Like i ts seven-foot-one-inch star, i t’s up there! Shaq plays a genie who emerges from a boombox to grant a whiny 12-year-old three wishes. One is for candy, the others involve helping the kid find his “real” dad. For some reason, Da Brat and Spinderella show up, but not before the ti tular Kazaam — “a rappin’genie wi th an atti tude, ” per one tag line — spi ts a bunch of truly terrible rhymes.

9. Gheorghe Muresan

My Giant 1998

In this movie inspi red by André the Giant, Bi lly Crystal plays a sleazy American talent agent who stumbles on the seven-foot-seveninch Romanian import after the agent’s sports car flies of the road in Muresan’s native country. His instinct: Put the big man in pictures and make him a star! Like the beloved André, Muresan’s sweet and gentle demeanor is endearing. But when i t comes to screen presence, this might be the fi rst time he ever came up short. Chamberlain

8. Wi lt Chamberlain

Conan the Destroyer 1984

Aside from cameos, Wi lt the Sti lt’s acting career basically began and ended wi th this sequel to Conan the Barbarian, which sees him face of against a spear-wielding Grace Jones and the well-oi led torso of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a flowing wig, Chamberlain is believable as the warrior Bombaata and nimble wi th fight choreography. Maybe Hollywood came knockin’ again, but Wi lt’s trai ler was too busy rockin’ .

7. Julius Erving

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh 1979

Good luck figuring out what’s going on in this “astrological disco-sports extravaganza” (as an ad raved), which features funky musical performances and montages of Dr. J hoopin’in slo-mo. He plays the star of a perennially awful pro team whose management turns to an astrologer to help them turn things around. Her advice: Cobble together a roster composed enti rely of Pisces (actual sign of Dr. J). Has anyone suggested this tactic to James Dolan?

O’Neal

6. Michael Jordan

Space Jam 1996

His Ai rness gives a motley crew of Looney Tunes characters, from Dafy Duck to Pepé Le Pew, the Secret Stuf they need to defeat the evi l Monstars of Moron Mountain in this hybrid of live action and animation. Jordan’s acting against a green screen is impressive, though he had plenty of experience early in his career playing wi th teammates who weren’t really there.

5. LeBron James

Trainwreck 2015

As a square, selfabsorbed version of himself, King James earns some of the biggest laughs in this rom-com starring Amy Schumer and Bi ll Hader. LeBron plays best friend to Hader’s star sports doctor, Aaron, dispensing key advice — sometimes in the form of “Gold Digger” lyrics — as Aaron begins dating Schumer’s louche journalist Amy. Best running gag: that James is a cheapskate.

4. Kyrie Irving

Uncle Drew 2018

In this feature fi lm spawned by an ad, Kyrie Irving reprised his ti tle role from PepsiMax shorts that saw him don old-man makeup to show up to public courts, where he (and, later, his all-star friends) would trounce the locals. Wi th a cast of Hall of Famers like Reggie Mi ller, plus comic actors like Nick Kroll and J.B. Smoove, the whole thing is way more fun than i t has any business being. MVP goes to Irving’s raspy septuagenarian patter: Jordan

3. Kevin Garnett

Uncut Gems 2019

KG plays himself in the Safdie brothers’adrenaline-soaked New York thri ller, but this is no cameo. He’s so natural as all-star “Kevin Garnett, ” who gets mixed up wi th second-rate Diamond

District hustlers, you almost forget the ex-Celtics forward was a real NBA champ. Though surely he’d never entrust his 2008 ring to someone as shady as Adam Sandler’s jeweler Howard. iconic. The six-time NBA MVP gives a master class in side-eye as young cockpi t visi tor Joey regurgi tates his dad’s complaints that Kareem doesn’t get back on D. “Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court every night for 48 minutes!” he sneers. Roger that, Roger.

Irving

1. Ray Allen

He Got Game 1998

Ray Ray brings his A game in this Spike Lee fi lm, giving a moody performance as high school basketball phenom Jesus Shuttleworth, who’s deciding whether to go to college or turn pro just as his dad

Abdul -Jabbar (left)

2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Airplane! 1980

Kareem played a vi llain in Bruce Lee’s final fi lm, The Game of Death, but his work as “co-pi lot Roger Murdock” (a.k.a. Abdul-Jabbar trying to go incogni to in a pi lot’s uni form) is (Denzel Washington) is released on parole after several years in prison for ki lling Jesus’ mom. A tense father-son battle bui lds throughout the movie to a climactic oneon-one, where someone gets dunked on — we’ll let you guess who.