Wattstax

Wattstax documents a large African American music festival held in Los Angeles in 1972, seven years after the Watts riots. Mel Stuart, who had directed Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory two years earlier, built the film around performances from that concert while also showing everyday life in the Watts neighbourhood of the time. The result moves between the stage and the streets, setting the music against the conditions the community still faced. Isaac Hayes, Rufus Thomas and Albert King are among the performers, and Richard Pryor appears as himself.

The concert was staged by Stax Records, the Memphis soul label, and the film was produced by Wolper Productions together with the label, with Larry Shaw and Stuart as producers. It runs 98 minutes and belongs to the documentary and music genres. Stuart made it directly after Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the second of the two films listed in his directing career.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.7 from around 1,200 votes, while on TMDB it has a rating of 6.7 from a much smaller group of 20 votes. The larger and more established IMDb sample indicates a solid, widely held appreciation among those who have sought the film out, whereas the TMDB figure rests on too few votes to carry the same weight.