Summer of Soul

CTL-E-6178 · Work · film · 2021

VERIFIED evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-00477 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-W-0165 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6178. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is a 2021 American documentary film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, directed by Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson in his directorial debut. The festival took place on six Sundays between June 29 and August 24, 1969, at Mount Morris Park in Harlem, and television producer Hal Tulchin recorded about 40 hours of footage at the request of festival organizer Tony Lawrence. Apart from two one-hour television specials broadcast in 1969, the tapes then sat in a basement for the next 50 years. The film interweaves the restored festival footage with stock news footage and modern interviews, presenting performances by Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Sly and the Family Stone and others. It premiered on January 28, 2021, at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the documentary categories, and was released by Searchlight Pictures and Hulu in June 2021. It won Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards and Best Music Film at the 64th Grammy Awards.

The record

• Also known as: Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
• Year: 2021
• Work type: film

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 5 — 747 Program, Wave 12; fifth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): Gate A CLEAR: hand-checked entities.json (3,843 entities) 2026-10-16 — no Summer of Soul entity; the film is discussed inside Questlove's CTL-E-5813 description but has no entity of its own. Director endpoint confirmed live: Questlove CTL-E-5813, Person/musician. Supply: Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan tail tranche, ranked clean survivor #2151. The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: 747 Supply Ledger Tier 4 scan-tail reserve (Scan Tail Wave 4 banked), corpus-gap-candidates ranked #2151; Black music history on film, direct link to graph entity Questlove CTL-E-5813. Vital status: Not applicable — Work (film, released 2021). STATISTICS — Footage: about 40 hours recorded by Hal Tulchin in 1969, stored for about 50 years before the film (Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16). Festival span: six Sundays, June 29-August 24, 1969 (Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16). Running time: 117 minutes (Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16). Awards counted from the opened film record: Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award (2021); Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, 94th Academy Awards, March 27, 2022; BAFTA Best Documentary (2022); Grammy for Best Music Film, 64th Grammy Awards (2022). MEDIA: photo HELD (HELD — candidate: the film's theatrical release poster / a 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival performance still as carried on the film's reference page; no license claimed, PHOTO-001 verification deferred. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6178-summer-of-soul.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (not a place record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Work record; no map attaches at the entity layer. The festival site (Mount Morris Park, now Marcus Garvey Park) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (checked by name and variants against shorts-link-map-2026) | audio = HELD (HELD — no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged in this pass; the film's performances and soundtrack are)

Relationships

• Questlove — authored by
  Summer of Soul is Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson's directorial debut, directed by him about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, per the film's reference record and American Songwriter's Oscar coverage.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Summer of Soul (accessed 2026-10-16) — 2021 documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, directed by Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson in his directorial debut; festival on six Sundays, June 29-August 24, 1969, at Mount Morris Park; Hal Tulchin recorded about 40 hours of footage; tapes sat in a basement for 50 years; premiered January 28, 2021 at Sundance, winning Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award; released by Searchlight Pictures and Hulu June 2021; Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards; Best Music Film at the 64th Grammy Awards; running time 117 minutes — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Soul_(...Or,_When_the_Revolution_Could_Not_Be_Televised) (primary source · build store)
• American Songwriter, 'Summer of Soul' Wins Oscar for Best Documentary (March 28, 2022) (accessed 2026-10-16) — won Best Documentary at the 2022 Academy Awards for Questlove's 2021 directorial debut; featured never-before-seen footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that had sat in a basement; showcased Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, Sly and the Family Stone and Gladys Knight and the Pips; had already won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary — https://americansongwriter.com/summer-of-soul-wins-oscar-for-best-documentary/ (build store)
• https://www.sundance.org/blogs/release-rundown-what-to-watch-in-july-from-summer-of-soul-to-summertime-3/ (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Film (work_type: film) — documentary A film by Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson Premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival; won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize Subject: the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival (supports stored note)

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Record CTL-E-6178 · Combined Graph record U-00477 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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