Heartland Reggae (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Introduction Menu Animation & Audio Featurette-Politricks-Politics in Jamaica late 70's Featurette-One Love Concert-The Story Featurette-One Love Concert-Two Sides Meet Featurette-Singers & Players-Excellent 18 min overview Featurette-DJs and Sound Systems Featurette-Rasta-Rasta Roots Featurette-Rasta-Herb Featurette-Rasta-Talk Featurette-Heartland Review - what the film is all about
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	86:56 (Case: 80)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (70:54)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jim Lewis
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Bob Marley Peter Tosh Jacob Miller Dennis Brown U.Roy Anthea & Donna Judy Mowatt Lloyd Parkes Junior Tucker
Case	Click
RPI	$39.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes, frequent ganja usage
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Heartland Reggae presents a DVD music documentary about the formative time of Rock Roots Reggae in the late 1970s and its interplay with the political situation at that time. The film centres around the One Love Peace Concert held to try to bring together the factional political parties of the time. Just 60 miles from Cuba, Jamaica caught the attention of the American Intelligence (an oxymoron if ever there was one) Agencies in the late Seventies when the JLP (Jamaican Labour Party) leader and Prime Minister, Michael Manley, expressed a desire for Jamaica to be strategically aligned with other Third World nations. Fearing that Jamaica would go the same way as Cuba, the CIA started pouring money and weapons into the country to support the opposing Peoples National Party whilst the Cuban intelligence agencies did the same for the JLP. Blood ran on the streets for several years and even Bob Marley was caught up in the violence when gunmen burst into his studio in Kingston shooting his manager and grazing Bob on the chest whilst the remaining Wailers fled upstairs and hid in a tin bath! 

    After his near-death experience, Bob Marley fled Jamaica to London for 15 months until persuaded to return to feature in the One Love Concert, held in Kingston in Spring 1978, with other main-line reggae artists of the day. Against all the odds, Bob, whilst in a seemingly transcendental state, manages to entice opposing factional leaders Michael Manley and Edward Seaga on stage and unite them in handshake accompanied by a flash of lighting and clap of thunder from the heavens (fair dinkum!). Apparently, following the concert, the opposing factions, having seen that their leaders weren't hell bent on killing each other, cooled down the conflict. Manley and Seaga never met again for three years until the time of Marley's death in May 1981. Sadly, last year saw a flare-up of the factional violence to mark the 20th anniversary of his death from cancer.

    The Heartland Reggae film features much of the One Love Peace Concert together with footage from two other venues at Savanna-La-Mar and Ocho Rios and was shot in 1983 by a Canadian production unit. The DVD features a remastered film together with worthwhile extras including commentary on events of the day and interesting insights into Rastafarianism.

    As you will gave gathered by now, (if you've made it this far)!, this is far from a reggae music DVD but for better or worse the music is irrevocably intertwined with religion, culture and politics. For music fans, this features scarce and illuminating footage of some of the founders of Roots Reggae, many of whom are now dead. More than ten artists play extracts and some complete numbers from over 14 songs. A veritable smorgasbord of leading proponents of reggae such as Peter Tosh, Jacob Miller and Dennis Brown are featured in live performances together with one of the founders of rap U.Roy and temporary pop-stars Althea and Donna (Uptown, top-rankin'). The film includes five numbers performed by Marley including Trenchtown Rock, War and Jammin'. Marley uses the stage to try to bring union and Miller and Tosh make an impassioned plea to listening political ears to legalise it - the weed that is!

Video

    The whole presentation, film, menu and extras are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and are 16x9 enhanced.

    The extra features are high quality with excellent sharpness, shadow detail and no artefacts of note. The Heartland Reggae feature has a coarse grain throughout contributed to by poor lighting and telephoto lenses necessitated by off-stage cameras. There are none of the ninja, in-yer-face cameramen seen in today's concert footage. Grain is particularly severe in the night time excerpts from Marley's Kingston performance. Shadow detail in the night-time shots is poor.

    As befits the sunny climes of Jamaica, colours are bright and well realised even though some of the artists relished in wearing the revolutionary para-military garb of Castro and the like. Colour noise is evident in the low-light shots of Marley and posterization is seen in some of the backdrops.

    Aliasing is almost non existent except for on some of the latter-day footage. There is a hair evident for the latter half of the features probably incorporated into the telecine transfer process. There are frequent small white and black flecks evident throughout the feature but digital re-mastering has made these minimally annoying.

    Subtitles in English are burned into the feature and are of mostly the commentary rather than the song lyrics. The subtitle feature makes no difference to their presence and seems to have no effect.

    The RSDL transition is at 70:54 and occurs between chapters with minimal disruption.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There were two audio tracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1 and English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, with the latter being the default. Both were excellent and easy to listen to - on balance I preferred the subwoofer-supported 5.1 track.

    The dialogue was particularly clear and I had no problem understanding the lyrics even though they were sung in fluent Rasta. The audio sync was spot on. The commentary is largely directed to the centre channel speaker and song lyrics to the front mains.

    The surround channels were minimally used to convey low-volume audience noise and faint reverberation which is basically as it should be for a live stage performance.

    The subwoofer played a key part in conveying the bass/rhythm pulse essential to Reggae music ands was appropriately utilised. I found a distinct improvement in musicality when I conveyed all bass from the 5 surround speakers (set to small) to the subwoofer as per THX specs - got rid of a few annoying buzzes!. Interestingly the thunder clap at the meeting of the two leaders was not relayed through the subwoofer, inclining me to think that it was genuine.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Politricks

One Love Concert

Singers & Players

Rasta

DJs and Systems

    The video footage based on much archival material is regrettably poor.

    The audio tracks are excellent.

    Combined with an excellent set of extras, this DVD is recommended for fans of Reggae and students of Rasta and Jamaican politics and culture.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall