Stax, le label soul légendaire

  • Stax, le label soul légendaire
Genre : Musical
Type : Documentary
Original title :
Principal country concerned : Column : Cinema/tv
Year of production : 2019
Running time : 52 (in minutes)

In Memphis in 1957, Jim Stewart, a country music fan, convinced his sister, Estelle Axton, to buy a disused movie theatre in the middle of the black ghetto and turn it into a studio. They put together the first letters of their names, which gives "Stax". Estelle creates a record shop adjoining the studio, which attracts local talent, while Jim abandons country music for rhythm and blues. The label records its first hits, such as "Green Onions" by Booker T. & The M.G.'s, the first multiracial band. Stax's success quickly followed, concocted by genius composers such as Isaac Hayes, who would work in the shadows for ten years before becoming the soul dandy we know. In 1965, the arrival of Al Bell, a DJ with a thick address book, boosted the label, which was now run by a white man, Jim, and a black man, Al, who, ignoring segregation, worked in harmony.

The Stax Phoenix
The sumptuous 1960s saw the emergence of the talents of Otis Redding and the duo Sam & Dave. But despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the decade ended badly, with racial tensions escalating. Martin Luther King, who came to support the Memphis garbage collectors, was murdered in a Memphis motel in 1968. This trauma shattered Stax's mixed-race utopia: black employees now looked at their white colleagues sideways. The label was reborn from its ashes thanks to the explosion of soul music in the early 1970s, before going bankrupt in 1975. Punctuated with images of urban frescoes in Memphis, the film recounts this tumultuous epic thanks to unpublished archives and fascinating testimonies, notably those of Steve Cropper, co-author of the hit "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay", of Al Bell, of singer Sam Moore, or of Rob Bowman, Stax's "biographer".

Documentary by Lionel Baillon and Stéphane Carrel (France, 2019, 52mn) - Authors: Lionel Baillon and Taleesa Herman - Co-production: ARTE France, Flair Production, Universal Music France, Off Productions

Summary for official catalogues

La fabuleuse histoire du label Stax, qui inventa la soul et fit travailler dans un même studio Blancs et Noirs dans l'Amérique ségrégationniste.

Partners

  • Arterial network
  • Media, Sports and Entertainment Group (MSE)
  • Gens de la Caraïbe
  • Groupe 30 Afrique
  • Alliance Française VANUATU
  • PACIFIC ARTS ALLIANCE
  • FURTHER ARTS
  • Zimbabwe : Culture Fund Of Zimbabwe Trust
  • RDC : Groupe TACCEMS
  • Rwanda : Positive Production
  • Togo : Kadam Kadam
  • Niger : ONG Culture Art Humanité
  • Collectif 2004 Images
  • Africultures Burkina-Faso
  • Bénincultures / Editions Plurielles
  • Africiné
  • Afrilivres

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