2009 AFI Dallas Film Festival - Soul Power

(USA, 2008, 93 mins)
In English, French with English subtitles
35mm
Directed By: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte

Jeffrey Levy-Hinte’s Soul Power documents the atmosphere and 12-hour concert that surrounded the “Rumble in the Jungle”—the fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman that took place in Zaire in 1974.

The footage is more than 30 years old, but performances from legendary American R&B acts and the best African performers seem as if they happened yesterday. The film takes its name from James Brown’s “Soul Power,” which he performed, and includes B.B. King, The Spinners, Bill Withers and African musicians Miram Makeba and Afrisa.

Soul Power reflects the political and cultural sentiments of its time: the American civil rights era, the dictatorship of Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and the beginning of the musical intertwining of African and American beats.

Footage from the time was used for the Oscar-winning When We Were Kings. Levy-Hinte has taken the rest—all of it unseen—and turned it in to a meaningful cultural record.

Information from the festival's website