Soul of a Man

Featuring: T-Bone Burnett, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Eagle Eye Cherry, David Barnes, Shemekia Copeland, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Skip James, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, J.B. Lenoir, Los Lobos, John Mayall, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Vernon Reid, Marc Ribot, James 'Blood' Ulmer, Lucinda Williams, Cassandra Wilson.

In The Soul of A Man, director Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension 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 three musicians through an extended fictional film sequence, rare archival footage and present-day documentary scenes. A vast range of contemporary musicians cover their songs.

Says Wenders: "These songs meant the world to me. I felt there was more truth in them than in any book I had read about America, or in any movie I had ever seen. I've tried to describe, more like a poem than in a documentary, what moved me so much in their songs and voices."

US | English | 2003 | 103 mins