The film features the music of James Brown, George Clinton, Sly and the Family Stone and Labelle but also acknowledges Dayton’s impact. The Ohio Players, Zapp, Heatwave, Lakeside and Faze-O are among local groups that carved a fundamental path in funk music.
“The film talks briefly about Dayton being a hotbed of funk music,” said Academy Award-winning documentarian Steven Bognar of Yellow Springs. “There’s a lovely scene in which different interviewees are asked what is the world capital of funk music and it leads to the correct answer.”
Bognar and the late Julia Reichert, his longtime creative partner, contributed to the film.
“It includes clips from an interview that Julia and I did with Dayton native Ed Warren, who grew up in the era when many funk bands were coming out of Dayton,” Bognar said.
Nelson is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, MacArthur Fellow, and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. President Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal. He also directed and produced numerous films, including “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” and and “Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple.”
“Stanley is one of the great living documentary filmmakers,” Bognar said. “His body of work is monumental.”
London is the Grammy Award-nominated producer of "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool," which was also awarded a 2021 News and Documentary Emmy Award. Recent credits include “Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me,” “The Talk: Race in America” and 16 films now playing in the Segregation Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum.
“I think the film is wonderful, inspiring and joyful,” Bognar said. “It’s such a rich history, brilliantly told.”
For more information, visit thinktv.org.
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