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$12 General Admission, $9 Member, $7 child (age 14 or younger)

Doors open for admissions 30 minutes prior to screening. Buy tickets at The Film Center or online now

Director/Producer Melissa Haizlip will join us for a discussion after the film!

From 1968 to 1973, the public television variety show SOUL!, guided by the enigmatic producer and host Ellis Haizlip, offered an unfiltered, uncompromising celebration of Black literature, poetry, music, and politics—voices that had few other options for national exposure, and, as a result, found the program an improbable place to call home.

The series was among the first to provide expanded images of African Americans on television, shifting the gaze from inner-city poverty and violence to the vibrancy of the Black Arts Movement. With participants’ recollections and illuminating archival clips, Mr. SOUL! captures a critical moment in culture whose impact continues to resonate, and an unsung hero whose voice we need now more than ever to restore the SOUL of a nation.

MELISSA HAIZLIP (Producer | Director | Writer) is an award-winning filmmaker based in New York. Her work responds to pressing social issues at the intersection of racial justice, social justice, activism, and representation. Her goal is to advocate and amplify the voices of women, girls and people of color. The film won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture) and won the 2020 Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best First Documentary Feature. Mr. SOUL! was shortlisted for the 93rd Academy Awards for in the category of Music for Best Original Song, received 32 nominations and won 19 awards, including 14 film festival awards. Melissa went to Yale University. She’s currently co-executive producing a docuseries on women in hip-hop for Netflix, and is featured in the new CNN original series THE STORY OF LATE NIGHT. 

 

 

“Mr. Soul!” is like a wrinkle in time, a time capsule that needed to be opened. In uncovering rare gold, it’s a film that reminds us just how much we don’t know.” – San Francisco Chronicle

“Mr. Soul!” is an enthralling testament to a show that was so far ahead of its time it now looks like a bulletin. One that hasn’t aged a day.” – Variety