A celebration of the pioneering films reflecting black life in Britain over the last 40 years.

In part two of a two-part survey, our writer explores an essential history of feature films, gathering works by contemporary voices like Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, as well as staggering, underseen gems you can stream if you know where to look.

Screening as part of Images Festival, Ayo Akingbade’s trilogy No News Today offers an incisive glimpse at the British Nigerian filmmaker’s hometown.

Picture this: being at the centre of the busy Emancipation Park surrounded by Poinciana trees with the night sky being the only thing looking down at you, decorated with the sound of children’s laughter in the distance, and the voices and music from a historic reggae film playing simultaneously.

Set in Brixton (which is to London what Harlem is to New York City—and both have been gentrified in recent years), starring Rasta singer Brinsley Forde (the frontman of the legendary reggae band Aswad), and cowritten by Martin Stellman (who also wrote 1979 UK cult favorite Quadrophenia), Babylon is a feature-length film about black life, black music, and black struggles in 1980 Britain.

The economy is in the toilet, Margaret Thatcher has begun her assault on labor and welfare institutions, and city after city is becoming what The Specials famously described as "a ghost town." If you want some background to the sad Brexit issue that cost the Labour Party a stunning 59 seats in the general election of 2019, you need to see Babylon.

Reader, are you there? I hope so, because it's time once again for that annual ritual of almost instant regret and months-long second thoughts, the public declaration of my choices for the best films of the year.

A British film released in 1980 entitled “Babylon,” which followed Jamaicans enjoying reggae music, parties, and sound systems in the United Kingdom, was given an “X” rating in London and banned in the United States as “too controversial.”

As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20 vision. In the case of Babylon (1980) which is now – four decades after its first screening – acknowledged as a certifiable classic, the adage applies. After its release in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s, and a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival the following year, Babylon did not enjoy a theatrical release in the US – until March 2019.

Thematically relevant, considering this year’s spotlight on the Windrush generation, Cinema Paradise 2019 will mount its bridge between film-makers from then and now, from the United Kingdom and Jamaica. The three-day film festival will open on Friday, November 1, in celebratory fashion with a screening of diaspora classic Babylon (1981). Customary to the festival’s dedication to community development and engagement, Babylon will be screened at The Ambassador Theatre in Trench Town and will invite conversation from cast and crew.