In just under two decades, Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, grew from a family-owned record store and studio to one of the most influential producers of soul music — launching the careers of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & The M.G.’s, and Sam & Dave, and more. Through archival performance footage and intimate interviews, Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A. chronicles the musicians, songwriters, and producers who smashed racial barriers and created the signature Stax sound that defined an era.
HBO Documentary Films presents Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A., a Laylow Pictures Production and a White Horse Pictures Production in association with Concord Originals, Polygram Entertainment, and Warner Music Entertainment. Director, Jamila Wignot; producers Jamila Wignot, Kara Elverson; executive producers, Ezra Edelman, Caroline Waterlow, Nigel Sinclair, Nicholas Ferrall, Scott Pascucci, Sophia Dilley, Michele Smith, Jody Gerson, David Blackman, Charlie Cohen, Ron Broitman. For HBO: executive producers, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, and Tina Nguyen.
Jamila Wignot is an award-winning Brooklyn-based filmmaker. Her body of work includes the Emmy-nominated MAKERS: WOMEN IN BUSINESS; THE AFRICAN AMERICANS: MANY RIVERS TO CROSS, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, which won a Peabody, duPont, Emmy, and NAACP awards; TOWN HALL a feature-length co-production with ITVS about the Tea Party movement; and for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE the Peabody Award-winning, "Triangle Fire" and Emmy-nominated "Walt Whitman". Wignot’s producing credits include “The Rehnquist Revolution,” the fourth episode of WNET’s series THE SUPREME COURT which was an IDA Best Limited Series winner and STREET FIGHTING MAN, a character-driven documentary currently in post-production about the daily lives of three men surviving in the neighborhoods of post-industrial Detroit. Her most recent film, A STRAY (SXSW ’16), was produced for Sundance Award-winning director Musa Syeed and tells a coming-of-age story of a Somali refugee who discovers a sense of himself and his place in the world through an unexpected friendship with a stray dog.
