When We Were Kings
Leon Gast · 1996
When We Were Kings (1996) is a documentary about the 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle' fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire. Directed by Leon Gast and edited over twenty-two years, it combines 1974 archival footage — of the fight, the Zaire 74 music festival, and Ali’s interactions with locals — with 1990s interviews by Norman Mailer, Spike Lee, George Plimpton and others. The film treats the event as a convergence of sport, race, postcolonial politics and personal reinvention, centring Ali’s agency and rhetorical power. It won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.