Documentary about the history of blues music screens in Portland

In the 1960s, the city of Memphis played host to the Memphis Country Blues Festival. It was a celebration of blues artists that many white organizers helped put together.

That festival was captured on film and has been turned into a documentary, “The Blues Society,” which is screening at the Hollywood Theater in Portland June 30.

The film reevaluates the the Memphis Country Blues Festival through the lens of race, the counterculture of the 1960s and the genre of Memphis blues.

OPB’s Paul Marshall spoke with the director Augusta Palmer about the film.