Cinema
Rockers
Ted Bafaloukos · 1978
Synopsis
Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace, a drummer living in a Kingston ghetto, buys a motorbike on credit to deliver reggae records to sound systems, shops and parties all over the island, and gets an engagement at a hotel for tourists, where he meets Sunshine, the owner's daughter. That very night, his motorbike is stolen; he sets off in search of it with his friends, through the studios and yards of the ghetto where the stars of the scene play themselves.
Context
The film was meant to be a documentary on reggae and became a fiction, shot in two months with musicians playing themselves: Burning Spear, Gregory Isaacs, Big Youth, Jacob Miller, Robbie Shakespeare, and the drummer Leroy Wallace, filmed at home with his partner and children; the Harry J and Channel One studios can be seen in it. Shown at the San Francisco festival in 1978, it found no American distributor until 1980.
Who it is for
In English and Jamaican Creole, one hundred minutes; the film is worth as much for the musical Kingston it shows as for its plot.
Prizes and reception
Le Monde saw in it a work of art rather than a film; a book of photographs of the shoot appeared in 2020 from Gingko Press.
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