The Blues Under the Skin (1973) 4K Restoration
Director: Roviros Manthoulis Run Time: 88 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 1973
About the film:
In the early 1970s, during a resurgence of interest in the Delta blues, music documentarian Roviros Manthoulis traveled to the Mississippi Delta to capture on film the remnants of the authentic American blues. Traveling throughout the deep South, Manthoulis filmed candid interviews and intimate performances by such legends B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Mance Lipscomb, Bukka White, and Roosevelt Sykes. His objective was to not only document the music but also penetrate the surface of the blues and explore the emotional and sociopolitical factors that make it such an expressive and haunting musical form.
“A forgotten documentary featuring many of the genre’s most influential voices”
—Christian Zilko, IndieWire
Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, The Blues Under the Skin (1973) dramatizes the tumultuous relationship of a young couple (Onike Lee and Roland Sanchez) as they struggle to overcome the barriers of poverty and prejudice that keep them from finding happiness together.
Virtually unseen in the United States, the film is a thrilling rediscovery, an untapped treasury of musical performances that not only captures a vanishing musical form, but offers a priceless glimpse of Black life in the rural South in the 1970s.
About the filmmaker:
Roviros Manthoulis was born in Komotini, Greece in 1929, and was active in the resistance movement to the German occupation. After studying filmmaking at the University of Syracuse, he returned briefly to Greece, where his 1966 film Face to Face caused problems with the dictatorship of the Greek junta, and he fled to Geneva, Switzerland. Circa 1968, Manthoulis was invited to Paris (where he would live the rest of his life) to direct episodes of a pop music series entitled “A l’Affiche du Monde.” Manthoulis’s critically-acclaimed work for French television allowed him to film such influential music figures as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Sun Ra, Richie Havens, Karen Dalton and Booker T and the MGs. In 1971, the French government was planning the launch of its third network (France 3), and Manthoulis was offered the opportunity to make a documentary on a subject of his choice. He chose the Mississippi Delta blues, and created The Blues Under the Skin (1973).
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