It’s not often a British-English language film needs subtitles, but it takes more than five minutes before a full conversation in the Queen’s English takes place in Francis Rosso’s cult film Babylon. That’s because Jamaican patois was the language of ease for young British Caribbeans in 1980, and it’s their generation the film is about. Now almost 40 years since its debut, the film will be released in the U.S.

When I arrived with Ed Bahlman (99 Records) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for my conversations with Brinsley Forde and Dennis Bovell, two key figures for Franco Rosso's Babylon, co-written with Martin Stellman (Franc Roddam's Quadrophenia, Idris Elba's Yardie), produced by Gavrik Losey, and shot by two-time Oscar winner Chris Menges (for Roland Joffé's The Killing Fields and The Mission), Brinsley, Dennis, and Seventy-Seven founder Gabriele Caroti were standing in the lobby.

Babylon is revealing and raw in its political and sociological spectrum in reference to racial divide, reggae music, and the underbelly of ambition to succeed within the realm of doomsday disillusionment.

Imagine: the young Jamaican community in England circa 1980, making music, smoking weed, and coming to terms with being black, in a white-dominated country. Babylon, originally released in the UK in 1980, follows the story of [Blue, of sound system] Ital Lion, as he competes in a local [sound clash].

Babylon (1980) takes a subtle, yet most affecting, character-driven approach to racism unlike any other film.

How a 1980 cult movie about South London sound systems finally got a U.S. release almost 30 years later — and why you need to see it.

As access to films becomes more and more democratized, the need for new voices in the world of distribution is at an all-time high. Be it the biggest of trillion dollar studios or the smallest of niche labels, seeing what films go to what distribution house can ultimately allow one to have a more keen eye when going into a theater. That’s why when a new distributor hits the scene, their premiere release becomes quite noteworthy. It’s all the more impressive when that debut film is one of the great discoveries of the repertory scene so far this still young year.

Pairing up with Kino Lorber for their first theatrical effort, the new distributor Seventy-Seven is making a hell of a splash with their debut, bringing to theaters for the first time in the United States one of the great undervalued dramas of the late 70s-early 80s.

Few films portray this moment in black British life quite like Franco Rosso’s “Babylon,” which premièred at Cannes, in 1980, and was hailed for its soulful depictions of a community largely invisible in British media. 

(Please note—contains spoilers.)

Brooklyn’s BAM hosts the first ever US screenings of Franco Rosso’s reggae classic.

“Babylon” is a 39-year-old nugget of a movie about young British Jamaicans and their itinerant reggae scene built around sound systems, freestyling and parties with rich, low lighting.