Summer of Soul | National Geographic

less than 1m read

·Nov 10, 2024

(Fast-paced drumming music)

[Man] What time is it?

♪ This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius ♪

"Summer of Soul" is about the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. With so many greats of music in the day, Tony Lawrence and Hal Tulchin came up with an idea that we need to throw a beautiful soul festival to use music to heal a community that's hurting.

♪ Let the sun shine ♪

And when it came time to distributing, they couldn't find any takers. In fact, a counterpart festival that happened about 10 days later called Woodstock pretty much got to define an entire generation. We wanted progress. We're black people and we should be proud of this.

The day that we got nominated for an Academy Award, I was just flabbergasted because I did not go into this project thinking that I was going to make something that would affect people emotionally like this. Getting nominated really isn't about me, it's about documenting a moment in time and the world's gonna see it. When you see films about the Civil Rights era, there's one slight area that always gets overlooked, Black joy.

Black joy humanizes us. And "Summer of Soul" is just an awesome look at beautiful people having fun in a way that you've never seen anyone from this era look.

♪ Gonna let my hair down in Harlem ♪

♪ 125th Street, now here I come ♪

Khan Academy Ed Talks with Ted Coe, PhD - Tuesday, March 15

How 3-D-Printed Prosthetic Hands Are Changing These Kids’ Lives | Short Film Showcase

View All

Factory to the World | Years of Living Dangerously

[music playing] SIGOURNEY WEAVER (VOICEOVER): China has changed a lot since I first came here in the late ‘70s. What used to be sleepy villages are now thriving mega cities. Back then, China’s most valued asset was cheap labor, and so they became a facto…

Rant: Doing this one thing will help ANY career - and most people don’t do it

What’s up you guys? It’s great news! So, I’m going to be sharing a very common-sense tip that will help you out dramatically in business. I don’t care if you’re self-employed or if you’re an employee; it doesn’t matter. Doing this one thing will dramatica…

Warren Buffett: How to Invest Tiny Sums of Money

I think if you’re working with a small amount of money, I think you can make very significant sums. But as soon as you start getting the money up into the millions, many millions, the curve on expectable results falls off just dramatically. So, I just cam…

The rise of industrial capitalism | AP US History | Khan Academy