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The Soul of a Man

Director Wim Wenders (Buena Vista Social Club; Wings of Desire; Paris, Texas ) explores the lives of his favorite blues artists — Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson, and J. B. Lenoir — in a film that is part history and part personal pilgrimage. The film tells the story of these artists' lives in music through a fictional film-within-a-film, rare archival footage, and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians, including Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, Lou Reed, Eagle Eye Cherry, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cassandra Wilson, Garland Jeffreys, Los Lobos, and others. 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."

English français español русский язык
  • Originally Aired September 29, 2003
  • Runtime 90 minutes
  • Network PBS
  • On Other Sites IMDB
  • Created March 6, 2013 by
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  • Modified March 6, 2013 by
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Name Type Role
Wim Wenders Writer
Eagle-Eye Cherry Guest Star Self
Chris Thomas King Guest Star Blind Willie Johnson
Shemekia Copeland Guest Star Self
Beck Guest Star Self
Garland Jeffreys Guest Star Self
T Bone Burnett Guest Star Self
Laurence Fishburne Guest Star Self - Narrator
Nick Cave Guest Star Self
Wim Wenders Director