Actor Brinsley Forde on the UK classic that gave black London a voice.

Babylon (1980) portrays Jamaican musical collectives, called sound systems, as movements of decolonization and resistance.

Franco Rosso's landmark immersion into London's Jamaican-British community has been restored and rereleased.

That may be why Babylon, a 1980 film that had its American debut in Brooklyn last week, 39 years after it was made, feels at once so refreshing, and so tragic.

The film made its world premiere at Cannes in 1980 but was “too controversial, likely to incite racial tension” for big screens in the States—until this week.

Whether you opt for the subtitled version or not, one thing is for certain: Babylon is a hidden gem worth seeking out if it comes to your city. Pulsating with lively music and righteous anger, in a world that remains far too resistant to multiculturalism, it provides an uncomfortably vivid reminder that still we have not come far enough.

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].