SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) – REVIEW

Still from SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)


I’m aware that I have my blindspots in film, so this post is going to be a little bit outside of my comfort zone. Documentaries haven’t only been pretty tough for me to write about, but I haven’t seen a lot of the popular documentaries. When it comes to documentaries on things I know a good amount about, I think I could maybe get something down together. There are two recent documentaries that I’ve recently seen that really should’ve gotten more awards consideration. The first is Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, and as incredible as this was to see in a theater, the Oscars normally don’t nominate the celebrity-focused documentaries that feel one step away from a biopic. The second is Mati Diop’s Dahomey, and I was really shocked that this didn’t get any sort of love. It did win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, though, which is a huge honor. It was shortlisted in a couple categories, but it didn’t make the cut at the Oscars. However, even in my self-admitted limited scope of documentaries, one of my favorite movies of the 2020s so far is Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), a doc about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and how footage of it was finally found after the festival was buried in time, especially since it went down during the same weekend as Woodstock. It was directed by DJ/drummer for The Roots/the multi-talented man Questlove, and it ended up winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Ever since then, I was eagerly waiting for whatever he did next. SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) feels like an extension of Summer of Soul, since footage of Sly and the Family Stone performing at the Harlem Cultural Festival was a huge moment. SLY LIVES! is also much more of a look into a specific group, rather than the recollection of concert footage. I personally didn’t know too much about Sly, but I know some of the hits. What carries over from Summer of Soul is how Questlove and editor Josh Pearson makes everything seem larger than life. From Stone’s meteoric rise to his downfall that’s so heartbreaking that it was tough to watch at many points, it felt like I was watching a musical god be born, made, then crumble. The framing of “black genius” is also mentioned throughout, where guest speakers like André 3000, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan, and George Clinton, among others, all had their own theories on what they thought “black genius” was. It ended up being very eye-opening and almost immediately changed how I view a lot of different artists in this space. I think that’s what ends up sending SLY LIVES! into the stratosphere, making Questlove a true gem in music documentary filmmaking. Once again, I can’t wait to see what he’s got next.


Ryan’s Grade: A-