First Thursday Films presents “Wattstax”
Partners: MSP Film & MN Historical Society
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Staged by Stax Records, a renowned Southern soul label founded in 1959 in Memphis, the Wattstax concert drew over 100,000 predominately African-American Los Angelenos, who themselves put on an exuberant display — memorably captured by Wattstax — of ’70s funk and soul culture.
Featuring incendiary performances by Isaac Hayes, Albert King, Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Staple Singers, the Emotions, the Bar-Kays, and other greats of soul, R&B, and gospel– plus biting humor from a then little-known Richard Pryor — Wattstax is more than a concert film. It also captures a heady moment in mid-1970s, “black-is-beautiful” African-American culture, when Los Angeles’s black community came together just seven years after the Watts riots to celebrate its survival and a renewed hope in its future.
Come for the movie — and stay for the conversation, led this month by MSP Film programmer, Craig Laurence Rice, with Gary Hines, Music Director and 
Producer of the 3-time, Grammy Award-Winning Sounds of Blackness.
These conversations at the Capri on the Northside are always thoughtful and rich. Plan to stay, listen, speak up, enjoy.
AND…check out the outstanding slate of upcoming First Thursday Films including Nope, The Woman King, and more.
Be @ the movies! Noteworthy films with good conversation that follows each screening on the first Thursday of every month. The series is presented by MSP Film, the Capri, and the Minnesota Historical Society.