Viewing the material for Soul Power was an unmitigated joy ? day after day a beautiful, vibrant world came alive before my eyes.  However, actually working with the material was daunting ? between the hundreds of hours of film and sound and the expectations of When We Were Kings fans, I was keenly aware the difficult path upon which I had chosen to travel.  Additionally,  I decided that I would not include any retrospective interviews or archival materials; anything not part of the original film shoot was off limits.  I wanted to make a film that would fully immerse the audience in  all aspects of the music festival: the anticipation, frustration, joys, disappointment and, above all, the sheer pleasure of the musical performances.  I wanted the filmed material ? and the people and events it portrayed ? to speak for itself.

We set about building scenes of everything and anything that that piqued our interest, without regard for how it would all hang together.  Needless to say viewing the first assembly, which ran for several hours not including the concert, was a painful experience.  That is when I printed out a graphic of trail leading to the summit of Mount Everest.  I relabeled the graphic ?Mount Zaire ?74? and used a sticky note to trace our progress up the mountain.  Knowing that the ?summit? awaited us at the end of the long and arduous journey helped us persevere; it also reminded us to be prepared, careful, and not to be led astray by hubris, which is the surest path to failure for mountaineer and filmmaker alike.

After a few months of editing we felt happy with the shape of the film.  That is until we screened it for an audience.  Though there were many who appreciated what we were trying to achieve, the majority were perplexed, and urged us to provide more narrative signposts, to incorporate more information about the event, its meaning, context, and the consequence of the event.  They suggested new interviews and archival materials to clarify the narrative.  One audience member stated flatly that Soul Power was ?not even a documentary!?  Such responses were quite sobering.

Instead of following these prescriptions, I sought to respond to the feelings behind them.  Many people became lost in the ambiguities of the material, so I attempted to craft a tighter more connected structure; others wanted to hear people speak about the meaning of the experiences, so I mined the footage for moments of reflection; some demanded more information on the context of the festival, so I placed explanatory cards at the beginning of the film.  On a slightly different tack, a large number of people encouraged me to deemphasize the behind the scenes machinations of organizing the festival and to get right into the music.  This was the most difficult note to tackle hear as it ultimately entailed cutting a number of scenes that I found absolutely fascinating.  Ultimately I am grateful for the passionate criticism that people all too freely heaped upon the film, as it undoubtedly helped me to make a better film than would have emerged if I worked in isolation.

The diligent and perceptive on-the-ground direction of Leon Gast, and the phenomenal camera work of Paul Goldsmith, Kevin Keating, Albert Maysles, and Roderick Young, among a half dozen others, provided me the opportunity to make this film in the vérité tradition.  Their camerawork was reliably patient, economical, insightful, and aesthetically sophisticated.  Many of the camera rolls struck me as near-perfect short films, where each moment beautifully flowed into the next, while weaving in ample coverage so that scenes could be condensed at will.  In a very literal sense, these cameramen are great filmmakers, and my approach to this film was wholly dependent upon their superlative ability to walk into situations and to dynamically convey what was going on.

Throughout the editorial process I was informed and guided by the masters of vérité cinema: Barbara Kopple, Albert Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker, and Frederick Wiseman.  I was also emboldened by the great concert films of the era: Gimme Shelter, Woodstock, Monterey Pop, Wattstax, and Soul to Soul.  Ultimately I hope that Soul Power is worthy of this heritage, but of course this is something that can only be decided by the audience.  Ironically, having completed Soul Power, there is still a tremendous amount of material that has been left out.  Fortunately, with the advent of DVD extras and the Internet, I anticipate ample opportunity to give this material a public life separate from in inclusion film.  Most importantly, I plan to make the entire concert available, but that is another mountain.