Review: ‘Summer of Soul’ may be the best doc of the year

In the summer of 1969, the summer of Woodstock, musical acts like Stevie Wonder, B

In the summer of 1969, the same summer as Woodstock, some of the biggest musical acts of the time, like Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson and the Fifth Dimension all performed in New York’s Mount Morris Park. Woodstock was immortalized. The Harlem Cultural Festival forgotten. But the event is given new light in the must-see documentary “ Summer of Soul (...Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)." Over the course six weekends, some 300,000 people would pass through what is now Marcus Garvey Park to watch the marquee names on the schedule, with the Black Panthers providing security. The brainchild of a born promoter, Tony Lawrence, the free summer concert series was sponsored by Maxwell Coffee and covered by the local news. General Foods even had the foresight to commission someone to film the festival, hiring television veteran Hal Tulchin for the task. The money was so short, they faced the stage west to save on lighting. By the end, Tulchin, who died in 2017, had amassed some 40 hours of footage of the performances, the massive crowds, the political speeches and the comedy acts. After some failed efforts to sell or do something with it, even with its new nickname “Black Woodstock,” it sat in a basement, largely unseen, for five decades — that is until Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson dusted it off and made out of it a strong contender for the best documentary of the year.