British director Franco Rosso, son of a Fiat worker from Turin who migrated to London with his family, began his career as the editing assistant of Ken Loach’s KES (1969). In this 70s, Rosso made several important films about the social and cultural movements in London’s Black community. He made short documentaries about the “Mangrove Nine“ – diners of the restaurant “Mangrove“ in Brixton who were accused of inciting a riot. The first episode of Steve McQueen’s miniseries SMALL AXE (2020) is about the same event. After the doc DREAD, BEAT AN’ BLOOD about reggae poet Lonton Kwesi Johnson, Rosso was able to realize his most important project, the feature film BABYLON (1980) about a group of young men who run a reggae sound system in Brixton and are preparing for a dancehall battle while defending themselves against racist attacks by the National Front, police force, family stress, money trouble, and unstable relationships. The protagonist, “Blue,“ played by Brinsley Forde, the singer of Aswad, which was considered to be one of the most important British reggae bands at the time. The soundtrack is by the legendary producer Dennis Bovell and the cinematography is by Chris Menges, who received an Oscar later on for Roland Joffé’s THE KILLING FIELDS. Franco Rosso’s film doesn’t glorify the scene: there’s crime, sexism, and a toxic British-proletariat “lad culture.“ The contrast between a real Rastafari worship service and the Rasta slogans while the sound system battles reveals that the British-Caribbean guys from Rastafari were a rather loose inspiration. In Britain, BABYLON has been a cult film for a long time, in Germany it is being screened as part of the “Zeitlos“ (trans. Timeless) film series.

The Mangrove Nine, Franco Rosso (1973): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQQLLtfNhcY

Dread, Beat an’ Blood (1979, excerpt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZoO2Iz9jLw

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy

The Mangrove Nine, Franco Rosso (1973): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQQLLtfNhcY

Dread, Beat an’ Blood (1979, Auszug): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZoO2Iz9jLw