Indefatigable in their desire to find larger and larger audiences for their film, Adam Bhala Lough (Bomb the System, Weapons) and and his co-director Ethan Higbee have been self-distributing The Upsetter: The Life & Music of Lee “Scratch” Perry for what feels like an eternity. The film had its world premiere at SXSW in 2008 and bounced around the festival circuit for the next year and a half, picking up Benicio Del Toro as an executive producer and narrator along the way, while winning generally positive notices in most of its stops. When Lough (one of 2003’s “25 New Faces of Independent […]
by Brandon Harris on Dec 7, 2012Widely revered in reggae and hip-hop circles, Lee “Scratch” Perry is one of 20th century music’s most influential and mysterious artists, a tried-and-true rasta man whose lasting contribution goes beyond spawning some of reggae’s most seminal acts. He was, in fact, the driver for the aesthetic innovations that germinated into the two genres mentioned above, and he reinvented the image of the studio engineer from mere technician to artistic focal point. Now in his mid seventies and expatriated to Switzerland, he’s the subject of the feature-length doc The Upsetter, from the directors Adam Bhala Lough (The Carter, Weapons) and […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 23, 2011While it doesn’t have to stretch to come off as a sexy and intoxicating (or from the number of casually inebriated drivers, intoxicated) place, Trinidad and Tobago has a reputation as relatively unassuming. Although it is not reliant on tourism to fuel its economy thanks to its abundance of oil and natural gas, it hasn’t escaped the fate of many struggling Caribbean economies, trying to gain traction in a world increasingly dominated by information technology and increasingly scarce resources. Trinidad and Tobago’s modest prosperity and egalitarian vibe seem to make this largely forgotten southernmost outpost of the Afro-Caribbean world an […]
by Brandon Harris on Dec 5, 2010