Leon Gast’s remarkable film-which is intercut with terrific recent interviews with eyewitnesses Norman Mailer and George Plimpton–is about much more than one stupendous fight. Both a tribute to Ali and an evocation of a bygone era, it’s about the transformative moment when black America, flexing its newborn pride, encountered black Africa, in an event dreamed up by the aspiring promoter (and ex-con) Don King and funded by Zairean dictator Mobutu, who forked over $10 million. Here are James Brown, B. B. King, Miriam Makeba and the Spinners, flown over for a music festival and then stranded in Zaire for six weeks when the fight is postponed because Foreman gashed his eye in training. Gast shot hundreds of hours of film in his two months in Zaire, and it took him 22 years to edit it down to its current fleet, joyous form. It was well worth the wait.
