Independent Lens
WE WANT THE FUNK!
WE WANT THE FUNK! is a syncopated voyage through the history of funk music, spanning its African and early jazz roots.
Harlem: The Soul of the Nation
Harlem: The Soul of the Nation tells the rich, bold, and complicated history of Harlem, and the people who witnessed its flourishing.
- Funding Initiative
- Series and Special Projects
Producer/Director
Stanley Nelson
Stanley Nelson is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, MacArthur Fellow, and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal. Nelson has directed and produced numerous films, including Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, and Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple.
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The Film
Harlem: The Soul of the Nation tells the rich, bold, and complicated history of Harlem, and the people who witnessed its flourishing. The film dissects distinct periods of Harlem’s development, retracing the population shifts of the 20th century—from the Jewish and Italian farmlands of the late 19th century to the Black artistic explosion of the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age in the 1920s, detailing the story of the “New Negro Movement” grown in Harlem with the first generation of Black people born completely outside the bounds of enslavement.
