A review of Soul Power at the Tribeca Film Festival

This documentary movie is set in Zaire Africa in 1973 at a multi-day music festival held in conjunction with the fight between the worlds greatest Muhammed Ali and George Foreman.

The fight turned out to be delayed for 6 weeks as Foreman was injured in a sparring match. The film has a good number of day scenes across the landscape and catches the early sun nicely.

Although much footage had originally been taken of the concert, it never was actually made into a film as intended and this is the first time it has been put together into a film. The festival itself ran into money problems that stymied efforts towards bringing the filming to a final product. The entrance fee of ten dollars was an expensive gate for visitors to the festival at the time in Africa.

The film plays very nicely and is scheduled to be launched in 25 cities in this coming July including New York and L.A.

What is particularly striking is just how well the photography comes across, and how the camera work in many spots was quite exquisite.

Also striking is a sense of peace, camaraderie and joy that the film portrays, it seems to come across that this place in Africa was a respite from some of the world’s troubles at the time and people seemed to come together in this movie with a joyful spirit.

Muhammad Ali himself was a world wide phenomena and the film offers ample footage of him and some of his thoughts at the time.

It was interesting how you could see and feel that he felt this place in Africa was calm and peaceful and contrasted these moments here in Africa with some of the difficulties back in the States in the big cities at the time. You can see how he mingled in with the crowd but at the same time had a commanding presence to his personality even in these relaxed settings.

It also captures some of his wonderful sayings and there seems to be a correlation with the dancing champ and the music itself.

There was no footage of Foreman, who more so kept to himself with the injury.

One mint scene has Ali it an outdoor cafe putting one spoon of sugar after another in his coffee or tea. I was nice to see him overall in these relaxed settings.

All the people in the film looked very healthy as if they were always working out or at least not involved as much in some of the scenes of people you would see say at Woodstock where they were inebriated on something.

There is also a lot of light in the film and sunshine.

Other scenes captured the front running style of the concert, where people seemed to have an almost soaring optimism for the future and a still standing youthful vigor.

One girl meets someone and says to him joyfully, “ Hey, what are you doing in Africa?”

Some of the mega stars such as James Brown, also portrayed on stage as incredibly athletic.

This is an engrossing film that has wonderful moments as well as surges especially from the music. It might do well in its general release and offers good entertainment value as well as showing how there are still times and places in the modern era that portray as a hopeful oasis from potential world wide troubles.