Soul Power

Dir Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. 93 min. Real to Reel.

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BY Jason Anderson   September 02, 2008 21:09

Editorial Rating:

Electrifying footage of James Brown at his most mustachioed is just one highlight of this long-overdue unveiling of shit-hot material tantalizingly glimpsed in When We Were Kings, Leon Gast’s documentary on Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s battle in Zaire in 1974. A few weeks before the fight, Kinshasa hosted an equally historic but far lesser-known event, a three-day festival that included many emotional meetings between African-American music stars (including Brown, the Spinners, Bill Withers and B.B. King) and performers from the host continent. Though Jeffrey Levy-Hinte’s doc is a little too generous with the vérité-style backstage footage (shot by such luminaries as Albert Maysles), the performances are exhilarating. 

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