Questlove is officially an Oscar nominee.
The Grammy Award-winning musician, bestselling author and Black culture anthropologist scored a 2022 Academy Award nomination in the best featured documentary category for his directorial debut, “Summer of Soul (… or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised).”
In the Hulu documentary, the co-founder of groundbreaking hip-hop collective The Roots and bandleader for “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” spotlights New York City’s 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Long known as “Black Woodstock,” the six-week event featured Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Mahalia Jackson and the Fifth Dimension, among others.
“It is a huge honor to receive this nomination,” the 51-year-old Philadelphia native said in reaction to the announcement.
“The Harlem Cultural Festival was both a testament to Black genius and Black joy at a formative time in our country’s history, and a cautionary tale about the way that history, especially Black history, can be erased,” he added. “Being entrusted with the responsibility of keeping that past visible has been one of the great honors of my life. I am beyond gratified to be nominated alongside these four other incredible filmmakers.”
“Summer of Soul” is in competition with Jessica Kingdon’s “Ascension,” Stanley Nelson Jr. and Traci A. Curry’s “Attica,” Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s “Flee” and Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s “Writing with Fire.”
In 2019, Questlove — also on deck to produce a forthcoming “Soul Train” Broadway musical — co-founded Two One Five Entertainment, a full-service storytelling and content development media company built upon compelling storytelling through the creation of films, short- and long-form digital content, theatrical experiences and documentary-styled content.
The company recently celebrated the success of Margaret Brown’s new documentary “Descendant,” which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and took home the Special Jury Prize.
The critically acclaimed film follows members of Africatown, a small community in Alabama, as they share their personal stories and community history as descendants of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to illegally transport human beings as cargo from Africa to America.
Queslove, himself, is a descendant of the Clotilda — discovered in a 2017 episode of the PBS series “Finding Our Roots” hosted by esteemed historian and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
With rave reviews, and its immediate acquisition by Netflix and former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground production company, “Descendant” is scheduled to be released later this year — and may end up in next year’s Oscar race.
“I hope ‘Descendant’ is one of those films you have to have a conversation about once you see it,” Questlove said of the film. “I want people to see it to give them an entryway into thinking about our country’s history. It is one tangible proof of our story that I hope creates space for different levels of understanding about race and culture and allows us to talk about difficult truths like this to further the conversation on the effects of slavery on its people.”
The 94th Annual Academy Awards air March 27 live on ABC.
