In the early 1970s, during a resurgence of interest in the Delta blues, Greek music documentarian Roviros Manthoulis traveled to the Mississippi Delta to capture on film the remnants of the authentic American blues. Traveling throughout the deep South, Manthoulis filmed candid interviews and intimate performances by such legends B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Mance Lipscomb, Bukka White, and Roosevelt Sykes. His objective was to not only document the music but also penetrate the surface of the blues and explore the emotional and sociopolitical factors that make it such an expressive and haunting musical form. Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, The Blues Under the Skin dramatizes the tumultuous relationship of a young couple (Onike Lee and Roland Sanchez) as they struggle to overcome the barriers of poverty and prejudice that keep them from finding happiness together. Virtually unseen in the U.S., The Blues Under the Skin is a thrilling rediscovery, an untapped treasury of musical performances that not only captures a vanishing musical form, but offers a priceless glimpse of Black life in the rural South in the 1970s.
The film never received a theatrical release in the United States and has existed for fifty years as a piece of lost media available only to the most diligent scholars and archivists who could track down a copy. But following a new 2K restoration, Kino Lorber is bringing the film to theaters this summer for a proper release.