Joe Lauro Weighs in on 'Lost' Harlem Festival Footage

The following article was written by Joe Lauro, President of Historic Films, in response to Salamishah Tillet’s recent “Summer Of Soul” article and interview with Questlove, which was published in the New York Times on June 30, 2021.

In a recent New York Times article entitled “With ‘Summer of Soul,’ Questlove Wants to Fill a Cultural Void,” it’s stated that “for nearly 50 years, this ( the Harlem Festival tapes) just sat in a basement and no one cared.” Additionally, one of the key premises of the film itself, as stated in the opening montage, is that the Harlem Festival footage was lost for 50 years.

This statement at best is hyperbole. The reality is that in 2004 I tracked down director/producer Hal Tulchin after screening a 16mm syndication print of an episode of his first, Harlem Festival series.

Mr. Tulchin and I went to lunch to discuss the Harlem Festival footage and shortly thereafter he signed a representational agreement with my company, Historic Films. The idea was to license clips to third parties from the 40+ hours of Harlem Festival footage, as well as develop a feature length documentary on the event. I pulled the video tape masters from his Westchester County basement, digitized the reels, logged their contents, archived the 1” submasters at the Historic Films office and insisted that Mr. Tulchin copyright all of the reels. In fact I filled out the forms for him and filed the copyright registration on his behalf (and on my dime) with the Library Of Congress . The Library Of Congress was also sent a complete set of videos of the 40+ hours of Harlem Festival footage as is their requirement for copyright filing. Through the years of our representation, we licensed excerpts of the footage to several productions including Sony Records, who used a sizable portion of the “lost” Nina Simone set in one of their home video releases.

Morgan Neville ( Academy Award Winning director of Twenty Feet from Stardom), Robert Gordon ( Emmy winning co-director of Best of Enemies and author of It Came from Memphis) and I developed a feature length documentary film on the festival, framing the event within the politics and civil right unrest that existed at the time, created a trailer and shopped the production around to several possible distributors. A deal with a major distributor was in negotiation in 2007 and we were in contract negotiations. To our surprise, the negotiations broke down and the rep from that company jumped ship and teamed with Mr. Tulchin, dumping Neville, Gordon and myself and taking the Harlem Festival project on as his own. Some 15 years later we have Summer of Soul.

As an archivist and filmmaker who has spent his 35-year career creating music documentaries, and unearthing and preserving rare musical content, I am delighted that this film has finally been produced. I only ask that credit for the re-discovery of the Harlem Festival footage be properly given. Producers of a doc such as this that is touting it’s righteousness and quest for truth should at least give credit where it is due. I assure you, if it were not for my efforts the Harlem Festival master tapes would likely still be molding in Mr. Tulchin’s Westchester County basement and Questlove would still be in total ignorance of their existence.

Joe Lauro

Click the following links for additional coverage in Book & Film Globe and Los Angeles Times.