In the days preceding the “Rumble in the Jungle”—the famed 1974 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire—America’s biggest names in R&B assembled for a three-day music festival. The brainchild of South African musician Hugh Masekela and American record producer Stewart Levine, the concert featured beloved performers: James Brown and the Mighty JBs headlined, while Bill Withers, B.B. King, the Spinners and top African acts such as Miriam Makeba and Afrisa filled out the electrifying slate. Though most of the black American performers were visiting Africa for the first time, many felt they had returned home. After years spent rooted in the civil rights movement, the journey prompted them to explore roots of another sort, and their days leading up to the festival were spent as if in an alternative universe, where Black Power took on an entirely new reality and meaning. The festival and film were financed by a Liberian investment group that became hindered by legal disputes, and consequently the film footage remained in the can for more than two decades. Eventually, the disputes were settled and the footage was transformed into the 1996 Academy Award-winning film WHEN WE WERE KINGS. Unfortunately, the historical concert didn’t make the cut. The editor of KINGS, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, understood that the concert footage was worthy of a film unto itself and resurrected it from the editing-room floor. SOUL POWER is the dazzling result. With never-seen footage of the performances and new sections with Ali, the film plays like a glorious time capsule. SOUL POWER is a beautifully constructed lost object that creates more than mere nostalgia: It allows one to fully enter into the world of 1974 and captures an event so extraordinary that we dare not forget it.

Post screening discussion and performance featuring filmmaker Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and legendary funk / jazz trombonist Fred Wesley. Wesley will also perform in the Silver Plaza on 6/19 at 7:00 p.m. Be sure to catch the ‘Master Class: Dialogue on Directing’ with filmmaker Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Leon Gast (filmmaker, WHEN WE WERE KINGS) on 6/19 at noon. See MASTER CLASS: DIRECTING.