Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and producer Joseph Patel had already teamed up for the documentary Summer of Soul — a film that played at IndieLisboa and ended up winning the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2022 — and now they’re back with another story rooted in African-American culture. This time, the subject of their gaze is the blazing star that was Sly Stone in the 1960s and 1970s, who later saw his career fall into obscurity. The film goes beyond this musical legend to explore the particular difficulties faced by black artists.
His musical genius is recognised and undeniable, preserved on albums like ‘Stand’ or ‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On’. Even so, given what Sly Stone built, a new and unheard of music that suggested the possibility of another America, a new America, no less, and given what his Sly & The Family Stone represented during the turbulent transition from the 1960s to the following decade, when they were the most important band in the country, undisputed kings of the stage, authors of the best concert at Woodstock, it can be fair to say the portrait that posterity has kept of them seems too blurred. Enter Questlove, the Roots’ extraordinary drummer turned director with “Summer of Soul” (2021), who pursues an extraordinary story, that of a multiracial band, made up of men and women, led by a visionary musician who collapsed under the weight of his ambition, the temptations brought on by success and the pressure of being a black voice and body bursting unbridled into the heart of an America that had only recently emerged from the ignominy of segregation. (Mário Lopes)
