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The Old Oak is a beacon of hope and humanity for our troubled times. If it turns out to be Ken Loach’s swansong he leaves us with a typically passionate and heartfelt collaboration. Pub landlord TJ and refugee Yara work together to battle poverty and racism in their local County Durham community, showing how kindness, photography and food can help bring people together. If this solidarity occasionally feels too idealistic for our broken times, we can forgive Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty for dialling down the bleakness of I, Daniel Blake. They are still raging against government-imposed misery, injustice and division. But the culture-crossing friendship shown in The Old Oak, based on real-life events, offers us a way forward.

A black and white filmshow-within-the-film beautifully encapsulates the director’s cinematic vision, recalling the monochrome images of his first issue-based dramas such as Cathy Come Home (1966). This scene shows us the power of film to bring ordinary people together, not just for escapism, but also to celebrate themselves.

Set in 2016, the year of the Brexit vote, the film opens with a coachful of Syrian refugees arriving in a small ex-mining community in the Northeast. They are met with hostility from a mob of locals. A young man wearing a Newcastle United shirt is enraged that one of the refugees (Yara, played by Ebla Mari) is taking photos. He snatches the camera from her and accidentally breaks it. TJ (Dave Turner) acts as peacemaker; he befriends Ebla and becomes a bridge between the two communities.

Yara and TJ share a love of photography. He offers to repair her camera and unlocks the derelict back room of the Old Oak, whose walls exhibit his own photos, many taken during the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s (“a whole way of life, just gone forever”). Yara’s open-hearted response to her new home stirs him into action. Together they make plans to use the pub for free meals and social events: “when you eat together, you stick together.”

Of course there are obstacles in the way of peace and love –  hatred, stupidity, sabotage and death all threaten to drag TJ down to rock bottom once again.

Two wonderfully warm and human central performances steer the film through the occasional scene that doesn’t quite ring true. Dave Turner is a gentle giant of a man, whose lived-in face conveys stoic vulnerability, pain and pride. Like the Old Oak itself, he is worn out and in need of repair. Yara is the tonic he needs to keep going. Ebla Mari brings a quiet charisma to the role. She has extraordinary eyes, and the kind of unaffected beauty that the camera loves. Hollywood will surely come calling.

Turner, a fire-fighter for 30 years, had been an extra in Loach’s previous two films, but describes himself as a ’non-actor.’ In interviews he talks about feeling “crippling anxiety and imposter syndrome” when filming began for The Old Oak. The make-up lady and ‘unique’ supportive on-set atmosphere helped him through.

‘Strength. Solidarity. Resistance’ reads the community’s splendid banner at the Durham Miners’ Gala, shown at the end of the film. Held proudly by former miners and the Syrian refugees who created it.

When I arrived at Cambridge Crown Court for jury service there was a queue. Like everyone else who came into the building I emptied my pockets into a plastic tray and submitted my bag for scrutiny by one of the security guards.

“Is that sealed?” he asked, pointing to my plastic water bottle.

“No,” I replied.

“Please take a sip, sir.”

I did as I was told then walked through the body scanner, collecting my stuff and walking on to the reception area where my name was crossed off a list. On the opposite wall there was an electronic sign listing the cases due to be heard in the building’s three courtrooms.

“Through there, love,” said a warm Northern Irish voice belonging to one of the guards. She held open the security door for me. “Upstairs on the third floor you’ll find the Jury waiting room.”

If you’ve ever done jury service before you’ll know that there’s an awful lot of hanging around waiting. This was the first working day of the year, so the spacious room was full of people chatting, looking at their phones or reading paperbacks. Three new cases meant three new juries to be selected, 36 out of the assembled 50 or so. Some of us would be sent home later that morning, not having been picked: disappointed or delighted.

I found one of the few empty window seats and sat down, taking in the panoramic view of a wet and grey East Road. I had mixed feelings about being called up to do my civic duty. I hate being cooped up in cramped rooms with strangers. But being a small cog in the judicial machine would be an interesting new experience. At the start of a new year it would be refreshing to do something completely different. And not have to work for a bit.

After quite a long time one of the court’s friendly ushers explained what would happen to us that morning. She handed out a form for us to fill in, explaining that one of the cases would be a longer one, so if there were any reasons why we could not commit to, say, four weeks of jury service, rather than two, we should write them down on the form.

I couldn’t think of any serious reason to opt out. My company were ok with me taking time off.

In a throwback to Covid times, the jury allocation process was played out on a big tv, linked to the courtroom, where the judge, barristers and clerks sat waiting. As our names were called out we had to stand in front of the tv and repeat back our own names to the judge. Then we were immediately led out by an usher, down corridors and up flights of stairs, to sit in our designated seat in the courtroom jury box. I was Number 3, so sat 3^rd from right in the front row of 2.

Once we had all assembled, including two substitute jurors, the judge thanked us for being there and explained what would happen next. The names of the witnesses in the case were read out, as well as the location of the alleged crime. This was to check that none of the jurors had a connection with them (they didn’t).

Then the swearing in: we didn’t have to stand up for this, unlike in the movies. One by one we read from the cards provided (religious or other): “I swear by almighty God” or “I solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict, according to the evidence.”

In the forensic glare of the courtroom this suddenly felt very serious and real. I glanced at the defendant in the dock: big, short beard, bald, grey-blue waistcoat and tie. Was he a rapist? And was that his mum in the public gallery glaring at us like Myra Hindley’s mugshot? It was scary to be suddenly made responsible for someone’s future. This was going to be gruelling.

Alex Garland is one of our most stylish writer-directors and in Men he has created a daft and disturbing battle of the sexes fantasy, the fever dream of a trauma victim. This very English feminist fairy-tale looks gorgeous and has a soundscape that grabs you from the start. It certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But for fans of folk horror, Angela Carter and David Cronenberg Men is a compelling and rewarding watch.

Garland expertly sets the scene, using a beguiling folk song from 1970 (Love Song by Lesley Duncan) as accompaniment to Jessie Buckley’s Harper as she drives from London to the Gloucestershire countryside. We see flashbacks to a man falling past a window and drifting dandelion seeds in a field. The sound of pouring rain in the song mirrors the weather on the road as the singer asks ‘Are your eyes really seeing?’

Harper arrives at her village destination, a picturesque 15^th century manor house, where she picks an apple from a tree in the front garden and takes a bite. “Scrumping, eh?” booms bluff landlord Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), “mustn’t do that! Forbidden fruit.”

Harper has booked a two-week stay here to try to recover from the violent death of her husband. At first she enjoys the beauty of the lush green fields and bluebell woods but this idyll is quickly ruined by the appearance of a naked man. In Men there’s always some bloke popping up to spoil things for her and most of them are played by Rory Kinnear in Kind Hearts & Coronets mode: a policeman, pub local, vicar, creepy kid and the well-hung Green Man. All are to some extent sexist, abusive and threatening.

Seemingly under siege from the dark forces of rural masculinity Harper plots her escape but is forced to do battle with increasingly disturbing assaults on her life. The finale of Men is a jaw-dropping tour-de-force of body horror, like Cronenberg’s The Brood or Carpenter’s The Thing taken to a demented new level.

What’s it all about? What is Garland trying to say here? That all men are bastards? That violence begets violence (Larkin’s ‘man passes misery on to man’)? Or that men only want to be loved, really, but just can’t quite make women understand where they’re coming from: that there’s something primal in the way.

Or none of the above. It doesn’t really matter because Men is carried by its’ strengths: excellent performances from the two leads and stunning audio-visuals. The tunnel scene, in which Harper creates a 3-part harmony with her own echo is spine-chillingly effective. Who knows where it could have gone if some dodgy bloke hadn’t turned up? Bloody men!

Like Garland’s stylishly brilliant sci-fi series Devs, it showcases a restless intelligence and curiosity, a flair for creating memorable scenes and choosing music to go with them. The blissful ‘Garden of Eden’ scene in Devs, soundtracked by Guinevere by Crosby, Stills & Nash, feels like a companion piece to the opening of Men. Both songs are inspired choices and if, like me, you had never heard them before, you’re in for a treat. Thank you, Alex Garland!

Lesley Duncan: Love Song

Guinnevere by Crosby, Stills & Nash

“More!!!”

For the last note of the concert finale, One Day More, we really went for it – choir and band nearly raising the roof of the Atrium Hall.

The audience rose to their feet, cheering and clapping in appreciation of what had been a hugely uplifting, moving and entertaining show. A tribute to the power of music to bring people together. And a payoff for all the hard work done by the movers and shakers of Sing! Community Choir to get us concert-ready, raising serious money for Romsey Mill charity.

There were youngsters dancing down the front and old folk tapping their toes. We even managed to keep my dad (88) awake. On stage they saw a sea of vivid pink, yellow and blue tops, a bit like Elmer the patchwork elephant. Smart move by the wardrobe department!

Sing! Community Choir is special. After a decade of rehearsing and putting on shows, they somehow manage to combine friendly informality with meticulous organisation. I first came for one of their Taster Days in January and loved it. I’m not very good at singing. But I wanted to have a go. I get a buzz from making music with other people. Singing in a choir is prescribed for depression on the NHS: it’s great for your mental health.

Sing! is run by a group of talented and inspiring people, with three of its founder members – Bethany, Naomi and Tizzy – still going strong. It has a rotating cast of volunteer conductors for multi-genre songs, which are taught by ear rather than sheet music.

All year we’ve been learning one or two new songs every week, building up to a repertoire of 14 for the concert. Audio files and lyrics for each part – alto, bass, tenor, soprano – are shared on the web so we can learn them. After a while you absorb these songs until you know them off by heart.

By July 9^th, the day of the concert, I felt ready – excited rather than nervous. Blue skies were smiling at us as we gathered for a warm-up in the light and lofty foyer of Netherhall School’s Atrium Hall, with its quirky sawn-off Cadillac from Grease. We ran through the non-band songs while the musicians set up in the hall. Sounded pretty good. Cakes accumulated on side tables. During the interval the audience could have their cake and eat it. Keep them sweet! Another crafty piece of planning.

Then onto the stage to rehearse together with the band. I stood on the back row and enjoyed the view until I started to worry about fainting in the heat. What if I expired in a sweaty heap during the concert and fell backwards? It was a long way down …

We had been on our feet for nearly three hours now, so it was good to take a break. Netherhall playing fields are vast, stretching up a hill. Munching on a sandwich and basking in the still-hot evening sun I spotted a deer emerge from the bushes on the horizon. A good omen.

Changed into our finery, we assembled in a classroom for a final pep-talk from Bethany and took part in Tizzy’s ENERGY chant to get us revved up. Trying to be quiet, we took our positions onstage. The band played the intro to Shut Up and Dance and the curtains parted.

Show time!

We were great. Did you ever doubt it?

Highlights for me were the songs I enjoy singing most – the breezy pop-rush of Rhythm of Love, the bonkers Grace Kelly (belting out the ‘violet skies’ bit gives me goosebumps), the trance-inducing One Day Like This and the epic One Day More.

For those of us who weren’t performing the Cabaret items it was a treat to sit down and enjoy them close-up for the first time. After Welcome Home and Love Medley (15 songs in 2½ minutes) I was tearing up a bit. The occasion was getting to me. When you’re right next to live choral singers it does something to you. When they sing in harmony (doesn’t have to be perfect) it goes straight to the heart.

Multiverses collide to gobsmacking effect in Daniels’ mind-blowing superhero fantasy. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a faulty firework of a film, a deranged zigzagging rocket shooting out sparks of oddball brilliance. While it gleefully nods to many other films (2001, The Matrix, Ratatouille and more), it is unlike anything you have seen before.  Imagine a live action family therapy version of The Incredibles on LSD.

The film lives up to its name: sometimes it feels like too much. A running time of more than 2 and a half hours suggests Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert were deliberately stretching things out to match one of Marvel’s overblown blockbusters. But Everything Everywhere All at Once is a dizzying cinematic experience. It puts your brain in a blender and you walk out feeling all shook up.

Like the best fantasies, the film is rooted in normal life and relationships. The Wang family are struggling to keep their laundromat business profitable. Evelyn (Michele Yeoh) and Waymond’s (Ke Huy Kwan) marriage is shaky and their teenaged daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) resents her mother for not accepting her girlfriend.

A visit to the auditors becomes the unlikely launchpad to madcap adventures in parallel worlds and selves. Frustrated and dissatisfied in normal life, Evelyn is taught to ‘verse jump’ by a superhero version of her husband and discovers many different Evelyns exist out there: the brilliant woman, the kung fu fighter, the lesbian with wobbly frankfurter fingers or the talking rock with googly eyes.

She is told that ‘a great evil’ is threatening every world in the multiverse and Evelyn is the only one who can ‘take things back to how they’re supposed to be.’ This involves confronting Joy’s alter-ego, Jobu Tupaki, a nihilistic fashion monster who threatens to suck all life into her bagel hole of oblivion. How will Evelyn, who believes herself to be ‘bad at everything’, fix the world?

A neat and tidy ending seems unlikely, given the wild genre-hopping ride the filmmakers take us on. Amidst the scattershot possibilities of multiple lives in multiverses, we are left with pick ‘n’ mix nuggets of wisdom imparted by the film’s various characters. In what is perhaps its keynote speech, we are told: “It’s a cruel world and we’re all running round in circles … the one thing I do know is we have to be kind. Please be kind.”

Then again, there’s also Jobu Tupaki’s alternative take: “this is all a useless, swirling bucket of bullshit.” A bit harsh, though the audience will probably nod along to: “there are only a few specks of time when anything makes sense”.

What saves Everything Everywhere All at Once from over-reaching self-indulgence is, paradoxically, a down-to-earth quality. Amidst the visual splendour, it has a charming home-made quality, an engaging sensibility shared with more ‘ramshackle’ films such as Son of Rambo and Be Kind: Rewind.

Among the film’s many weird and wonderful visual delights are the crazy and outrageous succession of costumes worn by Jobu Tupaki – from pink Elvis with pet piglet accessory to office robot (wearing keyboards and printers etc). And you’re unlikely to forget Jamie Lee Curtis in tight mustard rollneck as kickass auditor, Deirdre Beaubeirdre.

This powerful prison drama won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2021 and it’s easy to see why. Great Freedom (Grosse Freiheit) is a beautifully acted love story with two compelling performances from its leads, Franz Rogowski and Georg Friedrich. It is also an important piece of queer history, documenting the human cost of ‘Paragraph 175’, the German law that criminalised gay love until 1969.

When World War II ends Hans (Rogowski) is released from a concentration camp and put straight into prison to finish his sentence. His crime? Being a practicing homosexual. Austrian director Sebastian Meise’s camera follows Hans doing time in the same grim institution, going backwards and forwards between 1945, 1957 and 1968/9. The décor doesn’t change much; it is only the inmates’ hairstyles and ‘taches that give us a clue what decade we’re in.

Whenever Hans returns to prison, one prisoner is always there. At first Viktor (Friedrich) is violently hostile towards him, reluctant to share a cell with a ‘175-er’. But the two men gradually become friends. Viktor offers to tattoo Hans’s arm to cover his Camp number. Although ‘not that way,’ inclined he eventually learns to take comfort from the other man. Hans has other younger lovers in prison but the heart of the film is the moving relationship between him and Viktor, which becomes a kind of marriage.

As the fearless and long-suffering Hans, Rogowski is quietly mesmerizing. He is thrown into ‘the hole’ time and again for transgressing and emerges like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, bowed but unbeaten. Rogowski has a loose-limbed charisma that seems completely natural; it’s like he’s hardly acting at all. While Hans has always been himself, Friedrich’s ‘straight’ Viktor goes on more of a journey, changing and adapting to survive. Inventive and resourceful, he has made his own ukulele and backgammon set; his DIY tattoo kit is cobbled together from stolen bits and pieces.

Viktor is often the source of the film’s humour, which flickers like Hans’s matches in the darkness. The inmates watch the 1969 moon landings on tv. ‘I thought it would be more exciting,’ says the disappointed Viktor. ‘With aliens and that?’ says Hans. ‘Why not?’ replies Viktor.

In the company of these men we somehow escape from the claustrophobia of prison life. We are stuck with them, but they take us out of ourselves. Apart from the exercise yard and Super 8 flashbacks to a blissful countryside scene, there are very few outside sequences in Great Freedom. In the yard we often hear the sound of screaming swifts. Are these birds of summer exalting in their freedom or are they in pain? Probably both, as poet Ted Hughes would have it: ‘screaming as if speed-burned’.

Meise wants us to absorb these ambiguous sounds of freedom. Moving towards the film’s clever ending, he also wants us to think about ‘the irony of fate’, a phrase used by Viktor when explaining why he has been in prison for so long. When Hans becomes ‘legal’ and gets out he discovers freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

On the way out of the cinema a church noticeboard seemed to echo Great Freedom’s core message: THE LIGHT SHINETH IN THE DARKNESS AND THE DARKNESS HAS NOT OVERCOME IT (John 1.5).

Or, as Morrissey put it, there is a light that never goes out.

This novella, written in 1923 when the author was twenty, offers a fascinating glimpse of Némirovsky’s emerging literary talents. The Prodigal Child begins and ends like a biblical parable, but also has a dark fairytale quality: a boy from the ghetto discovers he has a gift for creating songs that move both vagabonds and princesses. But he becomes imprisoned by his own powers, which seem to vanish when he reaches adolescence.

Despite its bleak ending, Sandra Smith’s elegant translation of L’Enfant Génial makes Némirovsky’s words fly off the page, with her frequently sensuous and lyrical prose echoing the poetic flights of its main character. The book also offers enjoyably down-to-earth descriptions of life in a Russian port at the start of the twentieth century. Némirovsky is concerned here with the nature of artistic inspiration, the dark side of being a child genius and adult reactions to it, which can begin to look a lot like child abuse.

10 year-old Ishmael Baruch is one of a large Jewish family living in a large trading port on the Black Sea in southern Russia. Life in the ghetto is hard but Ishmael loves the town and port, with its smells of fish and fruit and its exotic mix of people. He is drawn to “the unclassifiable riffraff that swarmed into the port, people from the Middle East who smelled of garlic, the tide and spices, swept up by the sea from every corner of the world and thrust there like the foam on the waves.”

Asked to sing by one of these tavern-goers, Ishmael finds that he is a natural: “the music worked like wine on all these coarse, dazed men; they listened, astonished by the new song.” The words and music he conjures up “come to life in him like mysterious birds to whom he only needed to give a little nudge.” As his fame grows Ishmael begins to make money, stops going to school, and becomes ‘lost’ to his parents.

By the age of thirteen Ishmael has already been taught how to make love by older women. He has got drunk on every sort of alcoholic drink, from Russian vodka to Turkish raki. He has been denied a normal childhood.

When he meets a rich nobleman and his ‘Princess’, they take him under their wing. She wants to ‘adopt’ him and have him sing to her alone. At first Ishmael resists “this woman who wanted to impose her will on his freedom.” But she is like a fairytale enchantress, with eyes ‘like a bird of prey,’ and he falls hopelessly under her spell.

Soon he is living in luxury in an ancient mansion, “steeped in alcohol and money.” The Princess and nobleman often kiss and canoodle in front of Ishmael. “He seemed to breathe in their passionate love as if it were a poisonous flower,” and his own feverish love for her is making him ill. She even kisses him “on the lips, wickedly, tenderly, the way you bite into the pink flesh of fruit.”

When the Princess travels abroad Ishmael moves to a chateau in the countryside and grows to love nature. But the damage has been done. He has lost his artistic mojo. Now, when he tries to write he feels “a profound numbness, a sensation of emptiness … a kind of painful weariness.”

Reading his way through the books in the chateau’s library doesn’t help. He tries to copy the styles of other writers, then looks for answers in scholarly works of criticism and analysis. Students and blocked writers will nod in agreement as they read Némirovsky’s darkly comic description of Ishmael’s despair: “he was lost in the inextricable forest of literary criticism; he completely lost his mind.”

By the end Ishmael feels that there is no way out except death. The Prodigal Child’s ending seems to offer little in the way of hope, foreshadowing Némirovsky’s own terrible end in Auschwitz. But her own genius lives on, thanks in large part to the work of Sandra Smith, who has translated all the author’s work into English, including Suite Francaise, the WWII masterpiece that brought her to the world’s attention. Kudos to Kales Press, who have honoured Némirovsky’s memory here with a beautifully-produced new edition of one of her first works.

http://kalespress.com/home/the-prodigal-child-irene-nemirovsky-translated-from-the-french-by-sandra-smith/

I really enjoyed Wes Anderson’s last two films, Isle of Dogs and Grand Budapest Hotel. But sitting through The French Dispatch felt like an ordeal and if there had been another story in this portmanteau collection I would have walked out of the cinema. By the end I felt queasy, as if I had eaten a smorgasbord of dainty snacks. It was too much. De trop, as they say in France.

Anderson’s visual style is always busy and inventive, charming and humourous. It usually matches his narratives in a coherent way. But here he throws the kitchen sink at us: we are bombarded by images, text, sounds and (he hopes) smells, randomly moving from monochrome to colour. We are asked to assimilate the stories of myriad characters in five different sections (if we include the intro and conclusion). It is the cinematic equivalent of trying to read a book written in different cases and fonts, with footnotes, doodles, diversions, instructions and cartoons. Fun for a while, but ultimately tiresome.

The French Dispatch starts with a wonderful tableau vivant of French town Ennui-sur-Blasé waking up for the day, its inhabitants going about their business. A beret-wearing Owen Wilson pedals around on his racing bike, giving us a guided tour of this quirky place. Anderson seems to be nodding his hat to the films of Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle; Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday) or Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Amelie).

But this refreshing aperitif is soon replaced by a more indigestible main course. Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), editor of The French Dispatch, an ex-pat edition of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, has just been found dead in his office. His eclectic team of journalists gather to discuss how best to honour his memory. In tribute, they decide to write stories full of the ingredients that he loved – art, politics, crime and food.

Story 1: The Concrete Masterpiece, in which a mad criminal painter (Benicio Del Toro) produces a series of abstract portraits of his guard (Lea Seydoux), who poses naked for him. These cause a stir in the art world and also inspire a prison riot.

More riots are on the menu in the second story, Revisions to a Manifesto, set during les évènements of Paris in 1968. A deadpan Timothee Chalamet, unruly hair à la Charlie Chaplin, sits in a bath smoking Gauloises, editing his list of youthful demands. He also sits in bed with an equally po-faced Frances McDormand.

Then we have The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner, in which a police chief’s (Jeffrey Wright) life is turned upside-down when his son is kidnapped. Half way through this story Anderson switches to cartoonish animation for the chase scenes, which adds more visual flair to the proceedings. Unfortunately, the score, with its annoying and relentless 2-note oompah organ riff made me feel sick.

Wes Anderson afficionados will no doubt return to The French Dispatch to discover things they missed first time around. The auteur has said that his film was “inspired by The New Yorker and the kind of writers they’re famous for publishing” (see the end credits for a list, including the likes of James Thurber). As a tribute to French cinema it is a bit hit and miss.

There is a speech by one character at the end in which Anderson tries to give meaning to what we have just watched. Something about life’s rich tapestry and inclusivity, the joy of writing about different people and places. But by then my brain was fried. I was all Wessed-out.

Music fans of a certain age will have Sparks’ electrifying 1974 Top of the Pops debut seared into their memories. This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us was unlike any pop song we had heard before – operatic, cinematic, hypnotic and odd. But it was the keyboard player who was the talk of the school playground the next day. Ron Mael looked like a creepy android Hitler and the camera loved him.

This indelible memory is shared by many of the talking heads in Edgar Wright’s wonderful Sparks doc. Apparently John Lennon was so freaked out by what he’d witnessed that he rang Ringo and told him to turn on his TV: “Marc Bolan is playing a song with Adolf Hitler.”

In the film this mischievous anecdote is brought to life by animated puppets. Elsewhere Wright matches the Sparks brothers’ visual flair by using a variety of film media to illustrate their story. Apart from the monochrome talking heads and film clips from their long career there is a creative mash-up of cartoons, cut-and-paste and clay animation.

After nearly 50 years and 25 albums, the music of Ron and Russell Mael remains vital and relevant. Other musicians queue up to pay homage to their provocative outsider sensibility, their creativity and dedication to their art. Sparks are engaging company: playful, wise, funny and human. Wright’s camera follows them as they go about their daily lives and we warm to them even more when we learn about the hard times (“6 years of rainy days”) and the film projects with Jacques Tati and Tim Burton that got shelved.

At nearly two and a half hours The Sparks Brothers might challenge the stamina of non-believers. But Wright’s chronological doc has a lot to fit in. By covering each of their records he aspires to the daredevil and dogged spirit of a band who decided to play every one of their albums, one after the other, on consecutive nights in London in 2008 (with B-sides for the encores).

The Mael Brothers had an idyllic childhood in sunny California, clouded only by the death of their father, an artist who introduced them to “cool music” and took them to Saturday matinees. From the photos, his Clark Gable pencil moustache might explain Ron’s life-long homage. Sparks’ “jagged sense of narrative in their songs” perhaps came from often arriving at the cinema half-way through a film and trying to make up the rest.

They also had a cool mom who took them to see the Beatles twice. There they are looking fresh-faced and excited in audience footage taken from a concert in Las Vegas. Many years later Paul McCartney returned the compliment by playing Ron, alongside his other musical idols, in his video for Coming Up.

When trying to sum up what makes Sparks special some fans mention their unusual closeness as brothers, “some kind of magical combination of brother blood.” In contrast to other brothers-in-pop (Kinks, Oasis, Bros) they enjoy a unique symbiotic relationship, united by a singular vision and passion for music.

I once saw Russell Mael while on holiday in California in 1981. We were driving through Beverly Hills gawping at the film star mansions. A man who looked like Jim Morrison’s sister drove past in a beautiful lime green convertible. “Look! It’s that guy from Sparks!” Russell gave us a genuine full-beam smile. Another indelible memory.

This documentary features exhilarating ‘lost’ performances from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival: Stevie Wonder dazzles on drums and keyboards; Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples take it to church; Nina Simone presides like a radical African princess; Sly & the Family Stone steal the show and leave us on a high. The cameras capture the party atmosphere, the excited faces of a joyous multi-aged crowd embracing Black culture.

Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is an uplifting treat for music fans and a fascinating piece of Black history. But why has it taken 50 years for this treasure-trove to see the light of day? It seems baffling that original producer Hal Tulchin was unable to sell his work to American TV networks. Instead, over 40 hours of videotape languished in a basement until Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson was approached to take on the responsibility of ‘correcting history.’

Commentators point to this so-called ‘Black Woodstock’ being overshadowed by its bigger, whiter upstate rival in the summer of 69. Perhaps Woodstock caught the mainstream hippy counter-culture zeitgeist in a way that Harlem, with its ‘older’ gospel, Motown and pop acts failed to do. For this reason, it might have been less marketable. Or perhaps political conservatism and racism informed this rejection. Either way, Summer of Soul makes for more compelling and eclectic viewing than much of the tedious Woodstock.

Director Questlove interweaves the music with late 60s American news footage, together with eyewitness accounts and the thoughts of cultural historians to give it context. In the summer of 1969 Harlem was the place to be, a‘safe and happy creative forest,’ in which 300,000 locals attended the free Festival. But it also had a heroin epidemic and a problem with the white establishment (‘it felt like the system had let us down’). The moon landings that amazed the world were not universally celebrated here: some felt the money could have been better spent getting rid of poverty.

As heralded here by a militant Nina Simone (‘Are you ready to smash white things?) and the ‘freedom music’ of African artists such as Hugh Masekela, a revolution in Black consciousness was coming: ‘1969 was the year when the negro died and Black was born.’

Times might have been a-changin’, but in Summer of Soul gospel continues to provide release and catharsis, the ‘therapy for being Black in America.’ Some of the most memorable performances and crowd reactions are inspired by gospel singers such as Clara Walker and Dorothy Moore. A duet between Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples erupts into a volcano of passion, as each tries to outdo the other in raw-throated testifying.

Image-conscious viewers will contrast gap-toothed Jackson’s make-up with the perfect teeth and sheen of a modern-day Gladys Knight looking back on her own contribution. Elsewhere hot pink gowns and dayglo orange-yellow suits and ruffled shirts brighten the stage. ‘We were suit and tie guys,’ says someone. ‘Then we saw Sly.’

The threads and funk of Sly & the Family Stone take us into psychedelic colour. They get the loudest crowd reaction, providing melting pot good vibes with Everyday People and Higher. The sound is excellent – crisp and integrated, with irresistible drumming (‘The white guy is the drummer? He’s not supposed to be able to do that’). Proto-Prince Sly leaves us on a high, after post-gig monochrome pics of a litter-strewn Park.

‘Nobody was interested in a Black show,’ says one of the film’s talking heads. ‘It felt like they threw it away.’ With Summer of Soul Questlove has reclaimed and restored a remarkable piece of history and given it back to the people.