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. 

Brinsley Forde and Dennis Bovell join us to discuss the 1980 British film, “Babylon,” which is making its US theatrical premiere at BAM on March 8. The film stars Forde and Bovell composed the film's soundtrack.

Babylon is a pulsating document of a time and a place as well as a piece of connective tissue from the past to the present.

Franco Rosso’s 1980 Babylon—deemed too controversial for U.S. release at the time—portrays the brutal racism, violence, and austerity of Thatcher-era London through the eyes of Caribbean teenagers bound together by a love of Jamaican music and sound system culture.

The film is a gritty time capsule of London in 1979 and 80. It feels raw and lived in. There is a real sense of what it means to be a young black man in Thatcher's England… by all accounts they got it exactly right.