Earth, Wind & Fire and Questlove Open Tribeca 2026 With Doc, Hits

On May 9, 2003, The Roots played a free concert in Manhattan’s Battery Park at the second-ever Tribeca Festival; on Wednesday (June 3) at New York’s Beacon Theatre, Questlove — now an Oscar-winning filmmaker and Tonight Show mainstay — opened Tribeca Festival with the premiere of a documentary he directed about Earth, Wind & Fire and a performance with the surviving members of the essential R&B band. “There’s no way you could have told the drummer in the band where he’d be 25 years from now,” Questlove mused to the sold-out venue of his full-circle moment (after taking the podium from festival co-founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, no less).

Certainly the path from hip-hop drummer to award-winning documentarian is one Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson has blazed on his own, but if you’ve ever read or watched an interview with him, it’s clear this is what he was meant to do. His completist knowledge, nerdy excitement and thoughtful analysis when it comes to music history is simultaneously impressive and inviting: some music historians/critics talk at you, but he wants to share what he knows with you. Add to that the fact that the man is a conduit for rhythm and you have a once-in-a-generation talent who can do and teach in equal measure.

His deep love of music history and intuitive understanding of the groove runs throughout Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial VS That’s the Weight of the World), a must-see documentary about a complicated visionary (the band’s founder, Maurice White) who spread a metaphysical vision of positivity while keeping up some serious emotional barriers with seemingly everyone in his life up until his 2016 death. Talking heads include Stevie Wonder, H.E.R., Anderson .Paak, Flea and Barack and Michelle Obama, but the real shining star of this doc is the archival footage he’s found and deftly edited together to tell the story of a musically and visually astounding live act, a band whose onstage grooves went far deeper and rawer than their oftentimes polished (albeit perfectly so) studio recordings.

The surviving members of the classic lineup — Verdine White, Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnston, all of whom candidly contribute to the film — hit the stage following the screening for a marvelous miniset with the Roots. There are few, if any, directors who can premiere a new film and then hop on the drum set and funk their way through three all-time classics (Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Shining Star” and top 20 hits “That’s the Way of the World” and “September”) with one of the best bands to ever do it, but Questo is that unparalleled individual. And just for good measure, after the film he moseyed on over to Central Park’s Tavern on the Green to DJ the opening night after party, playing everything from “1,2 Step” to “It Takes Two,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” to “You’re the One That I Want” until one in the morning. Given that this is Tribeca’s 25th year, Wednesday night counts as one hell of a quarter-century birthday party.