Babylon (1980 film)

Babylon
Babylon
	UK release poster
Directed by	Franco Rosso
Written by	Franco Rosso ; Martin Stellman
Produced by	Gavrik Losey
Starring	Brinsley Forde ; Karl Howman ; Trevor Laird
Cinematography	Chris Menges
Edited by	Thomas Schwalm
Music by	Dennis Bovell
Production; company	National Film Finance Corporation
Distributed by	Kino Lorber Repertory Seventy-Seven
Release dates	30 October 1980 (United Kingdom); 11 September 1981 (Toronto); 8 March 2019 (United States);
Running time	95 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Languages	English and Jamaican patois with subtitles
Budget	£300,000

Babylon is a 1980 British drama film directed by Franco Rosso.^[2] Written by Franco Rosso and Martin Stellman (Quadrophenia), and shot by two-time Academy Award winner Chris Menges (The Killing Fields), Babylon is an incendiary portrait of racial tension and police brutality set in Brixton, London. The film, anchored by Dennis Bovell’s propulsive score, is partly based on Bovell’s false imprisonment for running a Jamaican sound system, Sufferer’s Hi Fi, in the mid-70s.

Produced by Gavrik Losey and the National Film Finance Corporation, the film is regarded as a classic.^[3]^[4]

^ Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press p 336
^ Paul Newland (2010). "We Know Where We're Going, We Know Where We're From: Babylon". In Paul Newland (ed.). Don't Look Now: British Cinema in the 1970s. Intellect Books. pp. 93–104. ISBN 978-1-84150-389-9.
^ Miguel Cullen, "30 years on: Franco Rosso on why Babylon's burning", The Independent, 11 November 2010.
^ Ann Ogidi, "Babylon (1980)", BFI Screenonline.