Documentary screening with live Q&A; director and executive producer in attendance.
AFS Cinema is screening Play It Loud! How Toronto Got Soul on Friday, July 31, at 9 PM. It's part of the Pan African Film Festival, and the Austin Film Society is presenting it. The screening is followed by a live Q&A with the filmmakers, so you'll get to hear from the people who actually put the thing together.
Directed by Graeme James Mathieson, the documentary tells the story of how many of Jamaica's biggest stars turned Toronto into a Jamaican music mecca. It follows reggae singer Jay Douglas, who's still active 60 years after the story begins, and chronicles how Jamaican expats built a whole culture of basement studios, record stores, and house parties. They recorded extraordinary tracks that mostly went forgotten until an American record label discovered and released the long-lost recordings, which breathed new life into their careers. The film is a look at that specific scene and the people who kept it going.
That scene is represented in the film by a long list of names: Jay Douglas, Sly Dunbar, Michael Williams, Cadence Weapon, DJ Supreme, Lillian Allen, Adrian Miller, Jackie Richardson, and more. The Q&A brings in director Graeme James Mathieson and executive producer Andrew Munger, along with Matt Sullivan of Light in the Attic Records. The film itself is part of the Pan African Film Festival, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit started in 1992 by Hollywood veterans Danny Glover, the late Ja'Net DuBois, and Ayuko Babu, and billed as the largest Black film and arts festival in the United States.
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Tickets are $14 for the evening screening and $11.50 for the matinee. The screening is at AFS Cinema, 6406 N I-35 Suite 3100, Austin, TX 78752, starting at 9 PM on Friday, July 31.
