In 1972, Stax Records organized a benefit concert to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The epochal “Black Woodstock” held at LA’s Memorial Coliseum featured incendiary performances by Stax artists Isaac Hayes, Albert King, Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Staple Singers, the Emotions, the Bar-Kays, and other greats of soul, R&B, and gospel—plus biting humor from a then little-known Richard Pryor. WATTSTAX is more than a concert film; It also captures a heady moment in mid-1970s African American culture, when the community came together to celebrate its survival and renewed hope in its future.
In partnership with Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies and Africana at Bates College, PMA Films is excited to announce a new annual film series, “Connection and Collaboration.” The series, which is free and open to the public, will group films that examine and celebrate the ways African Americans collaborate across their differences for their survival. The films are presented in conjunction with a series of local events commemorating Juneteenth. WATTSTAX (1973) chronicles a musical festival organized by the influential and pioneering Stax music label to commemorate the 1965 anniversary of the uprisings in Watts, an African American community in Los Angeles, California. WATTSTAX epitomizes “Connection and Collaboration” with its emphasis upon entrepreneurship, resistance to oppression, and what some now call “black joy.” CANE RIVER (1982), Horace B. Jenkins’s independent film landmark, is a romantic drama set in Natchitoches, Louisiana which has one of the oldest communities of free people of color of Afro-European descent. It, too, emphasizes “Connection and Collaboration” by exploring the developing relationship between a Black man and woman of differing origins–she is descended from enslaved African Americans, and he is from free people of color–many of whom owned enslaved African Americans. Finally, BROTHER TO BROTHER (2004) celebrates the connection of the past and present between two Black gay men. One is a celebrated, yet impoverished writer of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and the younger, a student at Columbia University. The film shows the importance of an older generation mentoring and nurturing a younger generation.
Running Time: 103 min.
MPAA Rating: NR
Language: English
Country of origin: United States
Director: Mel Stuart
Trailer link