MSP Film Presents Virtual Cinema!
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WATCH AND SUPPORT MSP FILM - ENDS SEPTEMBER 17
This presentation is part of the MSP Film Society's programming initiative, We the People: Required Watching, designed to spark conversation around current events and issues of social impact affecting our community, country and world. The series is generously supported by the George Family Foundation and KNOCK, Inc. All We the People online discussions are generously supported by Kelly and Mike Palmer.
Conversation: Monday, August 31 at 7:00pm. Registration is FREE. MSP Film Programmer Craig Laurence Rice in conversation with Filmmaker Melissa Haizlip, CEO and Executive Producer of SoulTouch Productions, Robin Hickman, and director and playwright Dawn Renee Jones.
REGISTER FOR THE ZOOM CONVERSATION
About the Film
From 1968 to 1973, the public-television variety show Soul!, guided by the enigmatic producer and host Ellis Haizlip, offered an unfiltered, uncompromising celebration of black literature, poetry, music, and politics—voices that had few other options for national exposure, and, as a result, found the program an improbable place to call home. The series was among the first to provide expanded images of African Americans on television, shifting the gaze from inner- city poverty and violence to the vibrancy of the Black Arts Movement. With participants’ recollections and a bevy of great archival clips, Mr. Soul! captures a critical moment in culture whose impact continues to resonate.
Mr. Soul!, the documentary feature film directed and produced by Melissa Haizlip, celebrates the groundbreaking PBS series from its genesis to its eventual loss of funding against the backdrop of a swiftly changing political and social landscape, while profiling Ellis Haizlip, the charismatic man behind one of the most culturally significant and successful television shows in U.S. history.
Haizlip was the host and executive producer of Soul!, the first “black Tonight Show.” In 1968, Soul! was launched as a local, New York broadcast. In 1969 the series rolled out nationwide on PBS, on WNET Channel 13. By 1973, Haizlip had produced over 130 hour-long shows featuring a dazzling array of A-list guests featuring rare live performances and interviews from the legendary Al Green, heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Cicely Tyson, James Baldwin, Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, Ashford and Simpson, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, Billy Preston, Black Ivory, The Delfonics, Bill Withers, Nikki Giovanni, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sonia Sanchez, The Last Poets, Wilson Pickett, Odetta, Merry Clayton, Mandrill, Kool & the Gang, Toni Morrison, Kathleen Cleaver, Betty Shabazz, Stokely Carmichael, Rev. Louis Farrakhan, Mrs. George Jackson, George Faison, Patti LaBelle, Roberta Flack, and many more.
Extraordinary foreign films, must-see American indies, and groundbreaking documentaries from around the world, screening weekly at MSP Film Society.