Wattstax

Wattstax places us in the heart of the concert organised in Los Angeles seven years after the violent 1965 riots in Watts, following a dispute between three members of an Afro-American family and white police officers. Director Mel Stuart structures his film by combining images of this gigantic spectacle (featuring Stax Records star singers such as Rufus Thomas and Isaac Hayes) and conversations (in the street, cabarets, hair salons…) with various Watts residents. Awarded the Golden Globe for the best documentary in 1972, Wattstax transcends the category of concert-film to offer us a cultural manifesto whose intensity still affects us today. AR