This footage sat in the vaults for over thirty years due to legal disputes and was assembled as a labor of love by When We Were Kings editor Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. The film Soul Power chronicles the Zaire '74 concert with James Brown, Miriam Makeba, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz, and others that took place alongside the Ali / Foreman fight documented in When We Were Kings.

Zaire ‘74 was the brainchild of South African musician Hugh Masekela and American record producer Stewart Levine, a three-day music festival that took place in Kinshasa in 1974. The event assembled America’s biggest rhythm and blues talents – including James Brown and the Mighty JBs, Bill Withers, B.B. King, and the Spinners – along with top African acts such as Miriam Makeba and Afrisa. The festival was held in conjunction with the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman known as the “Rumble in the Jungle.” The promoters hired a team of esteemed documentary cameramen to film everything, including street life in Kinshasa and behind-the-scenes footage of the show being assembled. And then the footage sat unedited for over thirty years.

The festival and film were financed by a Liberian investment group that became mired in legal disputes. Eventually, the rights were settled to facilitate the completion of the 1996 film When We Were Kings, which focused on the Ali-Foreman fight, and it won an Academy Award®. Jeffrey Levy-Hinte was an editor on that project, and recognized that another film about the twelve-hour concert was waiting to be made. With Soul Power, he finally brings this work to fruition. None of the footage has ever been seen, including new sections with Ali. The film plays like a time capsule, with no contemporary interviews to interrupt its cinéma-verité sensibility.



This one-time showing on August 2nd features a Q&A with director Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte. Tickets are $16 and the show starts at 8PM. The IFC Center is located at 323 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10014

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Soul Power