Soul Power: Takin’ It Back to Zaire 74

• by Rahul Chadha, August 07, 2011

This post was written by STF blogger Aaron Cael.

Soul Power plays like a 70s R&B/Soul field trip to Africa, intermittently meandering through the shadow of the delayed Ali-Foreman fight and the kleptocratic rule of Zairean strongman Mobutu Sésé Seko. B.B. King, The Spinners, Bill Withers, James Brown and too many others to list all came to Kinshasa in 1974 for a three day concert, an event that was supposed to coincide with Muhammed Ali’s comeback fight with George Foreman, which was chronicled in Soul Power‘s big brother, the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings. It has the flashbulbs, press conferences, backstage camaraderie and amazing performances that a concert film with a narrative arc promises and does it better than most. There’s plenty of bright spots of pure entertainment—backstage cultural exchange and flirtation, the goofy candidness of watching a shirtless Bill Withers dig into his breakfast steak next to Ali pontificating on freedom—but the film doesn’t flinch from putting images front and center that remind you that this carnival is taking place under an authoritarian regime—lines of soldiers, four-story high portraits of Mobutu, the faces of the front row viewed through barbed wire.

What we’re all showing up for, though, is James Brown. We know it, the film knows it, and the first thing you get is a long piece of The Great Black Leader and the opening shouts of Soul Brother Number One. This is rhinestones and mustache era James Brown, a year after The Payback and backed up by the J.B.s., seeming at the same time to be fully in command of his talents and a little distant from the machinery of fame that swirls around him. The closing shot (by Albert Maysles) that follows J.B. from the stage to his dressing room perfectly captures this transformation from World Touring Superstar Sex Machine to tired man who just wants to have a few moments to himself right now, thank you.

Soul Power came about after director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte had the “nagging feeling we were committing some sort of cultural crime” in putting aside so much great footage of the music of Zaire 74 after editing When We Were Kings. Serendipity helped too, with film stock choices back in ‘74 resulting in a nearly miraculous incorruptibility of the original negative 30 years later, giving Levy-Hinte 177 hours of footage to pore over and select. He claims there may even be a third documentary in there from all the verite sequences of life in Kinshasa that have so far gone unused.

[Photo: Director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, courtesy of Simon Luethi]

Comments

This film is very intersting which is played like a 70s R&B/Soul field trip to Africa, which is also the most place attracts me.It has the flashbulbs, press conferences, backstage camaraderie and amazing performances that a concert film with a narrative arc promises and does it better than most.I like it very much .Thanks for your sharing.
contact lens

    – .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (08/09  at  04:43 AM)

Page 1 of 1 pages of comments