Philly Hip-Hop Oscars: Questlove Wins Best Doc, Will Smith Smacks Chris Rock
Summer Of Soul (…Or The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the Questlove-directed film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, has won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2022 Oscars.
Summer Of Soul beat out a field that included Ascension, Attica, Flee, and Writing With Fire. The film is also nominated at next week’s Grammy Awards for Best Music Film.
Questlove’s speech came immediately after a shocking moment in which fellow Philly hip-hop artist Will Smith smacked and cursed at presenter Chris Rock over a joke at Jada Pinkett Smith’s expense. Most of this exchange was muted on the American broadcast:
Here is some additional context from 2016:
Smith later won Best Actor In A Leading Role for King Richard and in his speech apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees. Rock declined to file a police report, LAPD told Variety.