The weekend of Friday, November 1, to Sunday, November 3 promises to be a paradisal one as Cinema Paradise Portie Film Festival 2019 projects from screens in the throbbing city of Kingston and the verdant parish of Portland. It will be three exquisite nights in the birthplace of reggae and the (Port) land of films.

The screen will drop at the historic Ambassador Theatre (aka ‘The Bass’) in the heart of Trench Town on Friday, November 1. On it, Babylon, regarded as one of the best reggae films ever made, will open the festival, now in its ninth year.

It’s a new month, and with that, some retrospection. Each month, hundreds of home video releases hit the streets, and who better to curate the best of the best than us here at the CriterionCast. So with that, here are the five best home video releases of August 2019, as per yours truly:

Greg de Cuir Jr. talks to Hyperallergic about curating a retrospective of Black film for the 2019 Locarno Film Festival.

Perry Henzell’s outlaw film, with one of cinema’s most infectious scores, is back on the big screen in New York. …“The Harder They Come” provided a model for later movies, most notably the 1980 British film “Babylon,” which belatedly opened in New York this spring and itself became a cult film.

Babylon is many things: a movie, a time capsule, a wholly unique experience. That isn’t to say that the film has subjects that have never been explored in other projects, nor is it the only film of its attitude and tenacity to come out of that era of British filmmaking, shaking its fist at systemic cancers.

Retrospectives are always one of the highlights of Locarno Film Festival, and this year it rendered homage to black cinema, with works ranging from Africa to Afro-American, -Brazilian, -British and -French works.

Kino Lorber has announced the Aug. 20 Blu-ray and DVD release of Babylon, about a young reggae deejay in Margaret Thatcher-era Great Britain who pursues his musical ambitions, battling against the racism and xenophobia of employers, neighbors, police and the National Front.

After premiering at Cannes in 1980, Franco Rosso’s Babylon was suppressed both in its native England and abroad for fear that it would inflame racial tensions, a fate that resulted in decades of obscurity. But over the years this reggae-fueled drama has won its share of ardent fans, and a recent, long-overdue theatrical release in the U.S. has put it back in the spotlight.

From ‘This is Ska’ to ‘Babylon’ — these are the films that helped shape the reggae genre.

Franco Rosso’s reggae sound system film Babylon will be streaming exclusively in North America on TIDAL for the month of June. We caught up with the film’s lead actor, reggae legend Brinsley Forde, to chat about his role in the movie, which tells the tale of a young reggae DJ in late ’70s London named Blue and his Ital Lion sound system crew. Ital Lion are locked in a battle against rival crews — and against the racism inherent in their city.