An Oscar-winning documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival four years ago got a shoutout during one of the latest episodes of “Pop Culture Jeopardy!”
During episode No. 19 of the new series, which is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, contestants landed on the following clue in the category “concert films”: “Moments after 2022’s infamous ‘slap,’ this film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival won an Oscar for best documentary feature.”
The team “The Three Seasons” came up with the correct response: “Summer of Soul.”
What is the ‘Summer of Soul’ documentary about?
“Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)" was a massive hit at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
The documentary tells the story of the Harlem Cultural Festival, which took place over six weekends during the hot summer of 1969, bringing jazz, blues, gospel, R&B and pop performances to life for 300,000 people. The event overlapped with the famed Woodstock that was happening 100 miles north, so aside from some local coverage, Harlem got overshadowed.
For decades, 40 hours of concert footage — featuring performances from Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Mavis Staples and Sly Stone, among others — sat neglected in a basement.
When “Summer of Soul” producers eventually got hold of the festival footage, they turned to Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the drummer/frontman of “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon’s house band The Roots, to see if he might be interested in offering his musical expertise and becoming a first-time director.
“Instantly, I kind of scoffed,” Questlove said during the Sundance Film Festival’s post-screening Q&A via Zoom, as the Deseret News reported at the time. “I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. I know everything that happened in music history. ... You’re going to tell me that this gathering happened and no one knew about it?’ And sure enough, that was the case. Once they showed me rough footage, I just sat there with my jaw dropped, like, ‘How has this been forgotten?’”
Questlove easily could’ve just let “Summer of Soul” run as a concert film, but the festival was about a lot more than music, as I wrote in a review for Deseret News.
Against the backdrop of police brutality, the Vietnam War and political unrest — including the assassinations of Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy — the festival was a sanctuary for people from several backgrounds, a form of political and social expression. It was a chance to heal — the previous year had seen riots following King’s murder.
For two hours, Questlove interweaves the concert footage with its historical context, and includes new interviews from festival attendees and musicians, adding even more poignancy to the festival and what it represented.
“I want people to understand that all of this could’ve easily been discarded,” he said following the premiere. “Why was this not important? ... That’s to me the biggest question of all.”
Questlove is returning to Sundance Film Festival
The Oscar-winning documentary out of Sundance — which also won the 2022 Grammy for best music film — came during a big time for the festival. The movie “CODA" also premiered at the festival in 2021, and it became the first film out of Sundance to win the Oscar for best picture, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Questlove is returning to the Sundance Film Festival this month with “Sly Lives! (Aka The Burden of Black Genius),” which festival programmer John Nein described to the Deseret News as a “fantastic, energizing film” about Sly & The Family Stone.
Other Sundance Film Festival references in ‘Pop Culture Jeopardy!’
The same game that featured the “Summer of Soul” clue also included an entire category dedicated to the making of “We are the World,” the 1985 charity single helmed by the late Quincy Jones that brought together a collective of superstars and has raised $80 million for humanitarian aid in Africa and the United States since its release.
“We are the World” was the subject of “The Greatest Night in Pop,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year.
There was also a Sundance-related clue earlier on in the season.
In the second episode of “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” a team landed on the following clue: “Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer, & Zooey Deschanel play the sister to Paul Rudd, the title character of this familial film.”
The team responded with “My Idiot Brother,” and lost 1,200 points when host Colin Jost deemed it incorrect (he was looking for “Our Idiot Brother”). But following a commercial break, Jost revealed that the team would get those points back, because one of the contestants correctly pointed out that the original title of the 2011 film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was “My Idiot Brother.”