Cast

John Lewis, Harry Belafonte, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, Lynda Lowery, C.T. Vivian, Dorothy Cotton, Candie Carawan, John Seigenthaler, Lula Joe Williams, Wyclef Jean, John Legend, Joss Stone, Anthony Hamilton, Mary Mary, Angie Stone, Richie Havens, The Roots

awards

Chicago IFF 2009 – best director, Morelia IFF 2009 – audience award, Vancouver IFF 2009 – most popular film

Film description

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black woman from Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. This act of civil disobedience sparked the famed Montgomery Bus Boycott and the start of the civil rights movement in the United States. Soundtrack for a Revolution is the story of this movement through the music that accompanied the struggle for equal rights.

Filmmakers Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman recal the most important moments of the struggle: the bus boycott, sit-ins, the March on Washington, the Freedom Riders, and speeches by Martin Luther King. Shocking documentary footage combines with interviews with civil rights activists such as John Lewis, Andrew Young, and Harry Belafonte. The revolution’s soundtrack includes songs sung in churches, during protests and in prisons to provide solace and strength. Interestingly, the music becomes the protesters’ manifesto. Contemporary performers providing renditions of these classics include John legend, Wyclef Jean, The Roots, and Joss Stone.

Guttentag and Sturman’s film is a captivating history lesson, a musical journey, as well as homage paid to the most important American civil rights figure and icon of the human rights movement – Martin Luther King.

Karolina Kosińska