The Dancehall comes alive
Richie Pooh Celebrates his 12th anniversary bashment.
Performers include:
Sanchez
Spanner Banner
Anthony Cruz
The hottest part of the night is when Culture Artist performed.Tearing up the top 10 charts. Chuck Fender and Richie Spice had everybody begging for more.
Unlike most other depictions of Jamaican life and culture, Dancehall Queen is 100% pure and authentic Jamaica. The characters, the dialect, the style, the rhythm and pace of the story are all very real. If you are of Jamaican heritage or just interested in getting some insight watch this movie.
Marcia (main character) has problems. She's barely surviving as a Kingston higgler, her 15 year old daughter, Tanya, is fending off avances from lecherous, 40-something year old "Uncle Larry," and she hasn't had a good man in a long, long time.
When a seemingly unrelated incident sets off a tragic chain of events that leaves her good friend Sonny dead and her brother Junior scared for his life, Marcia realizes that she must take matters into her own hands.
Set in the fascinating world of the Kingston ancehall scene (with a side trip into the go-go racket), the movie is truly a girl-power fairytale with a West Indian edge.
Note: If you are not fluent in Jamaican patois, watch this movie with a friend from the islands. Or watch it over and over, until you get it. It is worth it.
This second volume of the booty shakin' reggae concert series, ELECTRIFYIN' STING, was filmed live in 1997. Performed in reggae's hometown, the Caribbean epicenter that is Kingston, Jamaica, this concert event features performances by several diverse talents
It was a wonderful performance and it brings us back to the good old days of what quality reggae used to be like.
Bob Marley is the star of this unique concert film which was shot entirely on location in Jamaica in 1977-78.
The film captures Marley and the other reggae superstars Jacob Miller and Peter Tosh at the height of their careers and is considered to be the definitive reggae film.
Utilizing an excellent soundtrack, the performances generate an unprecedented get-up-and-dance quality, while exploring the roots and widespread influence of reggae music.
Featuring:Peter Tosh, I-Threes, Judy Mowatt, The Wailers, U-Roy, Dennis Brown & More
Jamaican-made 1973 classic, A poor Jamaican, a 1970s anti-hero, tries to make it with a hit record but finds that payola rules. His record will only be played if he signs away his rights. He turns to dealing marijuana and runs afoul of the law. As an underground fugitive, he becomes a political hero. An outstanding reggae soundtrack underscores the plot, in particular the lines from the title song: "I'd rather be a free man in my grave than living like a puppet or or a slave."
Giancarlo Esposito is a New York photographer who goes on assignment in Jamaica and is lured by a gangster's girlfriend into a web of drugs, power, and lust. Luckily, this also gives Esposito a hot story to cover, because this gangster also plans on robbing the box office of Kingston's biggest Reggae concert - "the Kla$h". Features music by Shabba Ranks, Snow, Bounty Killer, and Papa San.
Life and Debt is a just-completed feature-length documentary which addresses the impact of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and current globalization policies on a developing country such as Jamaica.
This methodically rabble-rousing film can be read two ways: face-on as a laser-sighted exposé of Jamaica's economic strangulation by an IMF hell-bent on fomenting chaos and dependency in the name of slave-wage sweatshops and the almighty Mickey Dee's, or, from a slightly more askew angle, as the grimmest Black science-fiction movie of all time. A tale of one very small Black planet's near hopeless struggle against a technologically superior alien adversary more malevolent than anybody's Borg.
We learn of Jamaican farmers, food producers, and policy makers coerced by the IMF to dismantle their own prodigious food industries so that subsidized foreign competitors can crush them in the local market.
We're reminded of the Clinton-led suit against Jamaica's banana industry on behalf of Chiquita and Dole, which ensured that those brand names now controlling 95 percent of the world's banana trade can scarf up JA's minuscule portion too.
We hear of offshore poultry wholesalers who demand the return of their impounded caches of 20-year-old chicken, blithely claiming their poison meat was really intended for Haiti.
The film also gives an inhuman face to the IMF in the form of the devil incarnate, deputy director Stanley Fischer, who plays the smug villain with mustache-twirling relish.
The director confesses that "the film is supposed to make you mad," and hopes that editing it in her bedroom aided in transferring her sense of mission to the viewer.
The Reggae Sunsplash Festival is internationally known as the best place to hear new and classic reggae performers live. 1990's lineup featured more established performers like Maxi Priest and Freddie McGregor along with newer artists like Bigga. Eleven of the best performances were captured on film and transferred to this video release, which is unmissible for the reggae fan. DVD Only
Zebra - who was one of the top djs in 1998 - got the best out of the crowd as well as the most forwards. Another decent performance was Tonto Metro and Devonte; however, their show was almost stolen away from them by Mega Banton. He was called up on stage to cut a song with the duo, but he ended up putting on his own show and got big forwards from the audience. Another artist who got some forward during a short performance was Junior Reid, with his song "World News."
This film is the true story of two young men, Wayne (played by Spragga Benz) and Bigs (played by Ky-Mani Marley), who grew up together in the tough and dangerous streets of Kingston. They rob a soda truck and shoot the truck's driver while still in their early teens. The money is used to purchase visa's to go to the United States, where they continue their criminal activities, hustling on the streets of Miami. Wayne gets deported to Jamaica and continues his surge in crime, where he begins to extort money from business people. Bigs gets deported a few years later. After a while, they both head back to the U.S. with some of their cronies and continue stealing, targeting drug dealers. The drug dealers decide to put up a strong resistance to the two.
* Shottas (the Jamaican term for gangsters)
Starring:
Ky-Mani Marley
Spragga Benz
Wyclef Jean
Paul Campbell
Rude Boy
The film follows the story of Julius (Mark Danvers) an aspiring musician and mass murderer. Emigrating to the United States as a mule for a Suge Knightesque fellow, he immediately is frustrated by an employer who demands that he actually work in order to receive remuneration. Faced with so tyrannical a demand, he is torn with the dilemma of returning to his rude ways or sticking it out legit to save money for studio time. The devil on one shoulder snuffs the angel on the other.
The film goes from drug deal to drug deal and shooting to shooting.
Beenie Man's a competent actor and the film has a soundtrack.
This documentary, explores the life of the late Peter Tosh, Reggae artist, Jamaican folk hero, prophet and radical political activist. Based on his personal taped diaries, the Red X tapes, this film reveals the inner thoughts of this volatile musician. His closest friends and associates talk about the many sides of Peter Tosh, explaining his fiery career and dramatic death. Archival interviews with Tosh and rare concert footage fill out this picture of the Rasta visionary.
