This one’s for the reggae fans

There’s great excitement among SA reggae fans and Rastafarians this week as 79-year-old legend Winston Rodney, better known as Burning Spear, arrives in the country for two concerts this weekend. In celebration of the legend and all things reggae, here are three films from the still too slim archive of films that deal with the music that began in Jamaica in the late 1960s and has since gone to take over the ears and minds of millions worldwide.

The Arthouse Essential

Dancehall Queen – YouTube

Multi-hyphenate British-born reggae superfan, DJ, performer, artist and director Don Letts teamed up with Rick Elgood to helm this spirited, independently produced Jamaican comedy from 1997.

Audrey Reid plays Marcia, a struggling Jamaican street vendor and single mother who uses the opportunity provided by a local Dancehall Queen competition to develop an alter ego — the dancing nightlife celebrity Mystery Lady.  With this she pits her real-world enemies against each other as part of a twisty plan to save herself and her family from the miserable realities of life in the ghetto.

Simple but vibrant and full of wry humour and energy, the film may require a bit of time for non-Jamaican viewers to acclimatize to its un-subtitled and snappily delivered patois dialogue. It’s however an easy ask in a film that’s filled with some of the best music of the era. Dancehall legends Beenie Man and Lady Saw make cameos as themselves and emcees of the film’s climatic competition. The film is a small-budget, big-hearted love letter to the music and culture of Jamaica that holds its own among the more lavish and splashy films in the genre.

Reid sparkles in the lead role and thoroughly enjoys herself transforming shabby Marcia into the glitzy, enigmatic sex-appealing Mystery Lady. The rest of the cast, with directors Letts and Elgood’s clear love of the subject and the people of the world they explore, carry it all along to a bouncy, quietly amicable conclusion.

Trailer:

The Stone-cold Classic

Rockers – YouTube

The other pillar of the thin reggae cannon, after 1972’s The Harder They Come, Greek director Theodoros Bafaloukos’ 1978 comedy caper is still a stone-cold classic with perhaps the most memorable soundtrack of all reggae films. Originally intended as a documentary the film instead became a loosely plotted, freewheeling, vibrant loosely dramatized celebration of all things reggae and a sometimes heavy-handed pamphlet for the tenets of Rastafarianism that made it an immediate cult-classic, particularly with reggae-mad British punks, on its release.

The film stars stalwart Jamaican reggae pioneer, drummer Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace who plays himself so candidly with real footage of him, his wife and children. It tells the story of a broke, struggling drummer living in a Kingston ghetto who, tired of surviving on the peanuts he earns from irregular session work, hatches a plan to make some real money by buying and selling reggae records across the island.

In order to that, in a plot device happily borrowed from legendary Italian neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief, Horsemouth needs to get himself a means of transport. This comes in the form of a red motorbike that he hustles every last penny he can scrape up to buy and turns into his trusty chariot, with a lion of Judah painted on the tanks. His first stop gets him beaten up and his motorbike stolen and the rest of the film follows Horsemouth as he tries to get it back.

Featuring appearances by a host of reggae’s biggest names including Gregory Isaacs, Big Youth, Dillinger, producers Jack Ruby and Joe Gibbs, Robbie Shakespeare and Burning Spear, the film is a whimsical, heartfelt tribute to the life, culture, fashion and music of Jamaica that remains a must-see for reggae fans and Rastafarians everywhere.

Trailer:

The Diamond in the Rough

Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend - YouTube

No reggae film list would be complete without a film about the genre’s biggest star. While several other, glossier and bigger-budget documentaries have explored the life, legend and legacy of Robert Nesta Marley, few offer as intimate and empathetic a portrait of the man as this one from 2011, directed by Gian Godoy and Marley’s former lover Esther Anderson, released to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the legend’s tragic early death from cancer in 1981.  

Using rare footage of Marley in some of his most candid moments, shot by Anderson herself and presumed lost for thirty years, the film offers unique insights into Marley’s development and his early fraternal relationship with the members of the Wailers, particularly Peter Tosh, who would later fall out with Marley and go on to his own, more politically charged career as a solo artist before his assassination in 1987.

Following the journey from the Wailers’ first rehearsals through to their emergence as the world’s biggest reggae act after the release of their global breakout albums Catch a Fire and Burnin’ the film is a small but moving and gently human portrait of a man who went on to become an icon in his lifetime and for generations beyond.

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