Thursday, January 28, 2010
Zaire 74 Revisited One More Time
When We Were Kings, Leon Gast and Taylor Hackford 1996 documentary of the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 world heavyweight prize fight in Zaire between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman is one of the most entertaining and successful non-fiction films of all time. It one the Oscar and is such a definitive film about Ali, that it makes other films about him, Michael Mann's Ali, the odd Nation of Islam funded The Greatest where Ali played himself, as well as documentaries AKA A.k.a. Cassius Clay, and even Muhammad Ali The Greatest by the great William Klein pale by comparison.
Soul Power, which has come out 13 years after When We Were Kings is much closer to the film about the Zaire 74 music festival created and promoted by American record producer Stewart Levine and African pop music legend Hugh Masekela which was set up as a corollary event to the fight that Gast was hired to Documentary film producer and editor on Kings Jeffrey Levy-Hinte directed this film reconstituting the footage into a film that features some great Ali moments, and overlaps with some of the ground covered in Kings but this is clearly a film focused on the Zaire Festival. The rumble is almost a sidebar to the content of the filim in much the same way the festival was a sidebar in the now legendary Kings.
Before HD cameras, steadicams, gyro stabilized cranes, and digital technology, concert documentaries, (and non-fiction films, in general) were almost heroic accomplishments created with 16mm handheld Eclairs and Arriflexes. Levy-Hinte is able to assemble this film well after the passage of so many films partly because the cinematographers who worked on it are legends and superstars in their own right: Albert Maysles, one of the main practitioners of sixties cinema verite; Kevin Keating, cameraman for the Oscar-winning Harlan County, USA; Paul Goldsmith who is responsible for the stunning concert footage in Dylan's Renaldo and Clara; and Roderick Young who was one of the shooters on Wattstax.
There are no talking heads giving retrospective commentary on the event like the roles that Norman Mailer and George Plimpton played in Kings. Instead Levy-Hinte has taken the Woodstock/Wattstax approach of showing the event unfold without narration from its chaotic origins, through its "show must go on" moments after the fight has been postponed due to George Foreman's cut eye, through a sampling of the performances leading up to a climatic showing by Soul Brother No. 1, the Godfather himself, James Brown complete with midlife crisis mustache a JB dog collar and a one of a kind jumpsuit.
Soul Power is ultimately cultural and historical document. These artists coming and sharing the stage with a variety of acts from Zaire and elsewhere in Africa. Besides Brown, Bill Withers, The Spinners, BB King, The Crusaders, Fania All-stars (Celia Cruz and a veritable who's who of seventies salsa) are all captured with footage that is like lightning in a bottle, but one wishes there could have been oh, so much in the film stock that Levy-Hinte had to work with.
But no matter, this is a solid document of what was a significant and important musical event. I see it as the forerunner of Womad and what we now categorize as world music. These American musicians are clearly pumped up to be participating in this. And the adoration of the Africans is truly evident. One of my favorite moments are the very young teens of Sister Sledge trying to show the African dancers in Tabu Ley Rochereau's group how to do the bump.
If nothing more, Soul Power is great to watch for the backstage stuff and the fashions of the time. Who ever thought that plaid suits were a good idea? It boggles the mind.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:04 PM
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