The Soul of a Man

May 16, 2003

1h 43m

★ 6.5

Overview

In "The Soul of A Man," director Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of '20s and '30s events - shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James "Blood" Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.

Genres

Documentary

Music

Production Companies

Jigsaw Productions

The Soul of a Man Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self - Narrator

Laurence Fishburne

Blind Willie Johnson

Chris Thomas King

Skip James

Keith B. Brown

Self (archive footage)

J.B. Lenoir

Self (archive footage)

Skip James

Self

T Bone Burnett

Self (archive footage)

John Mayall

Self

Lucinda Williams

Self

Bonnie Raitt

Self

Marc Ribot

Self

Cassandra Wilson

J. B. Lenoir (1929 - 1967) was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter, active in the Chicago blues scene in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1965 the Swedish/American couple Rönnog and Steve Seaberg visited J.B. at his home on the South Side of Chicago and recorded 30 minutes of music and conversation. Parts of the film was used in "Soul of a Man" (2003).

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