Acting

Dennis Bovell

Born

1953-05-22 (73)

Known for

Acting

Credits

6 titles

Dennis Bovell MBE (born 22 May 1953) is a Barbados-born reggae guitarist, bass player and record producer, based in the United Kingdom. He was a member of a progressive rock group called Stonehenge, who later changed name and became the British reggae band Matumbi, and released dub-reggae records under his own name as well as the pseudonym Blackbeard. He is most widely known for his decades-spanning collaborations with Linton Kwesi Johnson. Born in Saint Peter, Barbados, in 1953, Bovell moved to South London in 1965 and became immersed in Jamaican culture, particularly dub music, setting up his own Jah Sufferer sound system. Running the sound system brought trouble from the police and Bovel…

Known for

Small Axe poster
6.9

An anthology series of five stories looking at the lives of a group of friends and their families in London’s West Indian community from the late 1960s to the early 80s.

Small Axe

2020

Rebel Dread poster
7.0

Documentary about Don Letts who played a leading role in pop history. Letts injected Afro-Caribbean music into the early punk scene and shot over 300 music videos including for Public Image Ltd. and Bob Marley, but also for teen sensations Musical Youth's reggae smash 'Pass The Dutchie'. Besides his enduring relationship with The Clash, the constant factor in Letts' eventful career as a DJ, manager, film director, musician and radio maker is that, from the 1970s on, he continued to draw attention to cultural issues, as he does today with his radio programme for BBC 6, Culture Clash Radio.

Rebel Dread

2022

White Riot poster
6.1

Exploring how punk influenced politics in late-1970s Britain, when a group of artists united to take on the National Front, armed only with a fanzine and a love of music.

White Riot

2020

Here to be Heard: The Story of The Slits poster
6.3

The tale of the formation, journey and end of the seminal Punk/Reggae band The Slits.

Here to be Heard: The Story of The Slits

2018

Sud Side Stori poster
7.0

In Roberta Torre's "true story of Romeo and Julet", Toni Giulietto is a vulnerable street singer and Little Tony-impersonator (who is himself an Italian Elvis-impersonator) who is constantly deceived and hoodwinked by almost everyone he knows. Romea is an attractive Nigerian immigrant who sells sex on the streets of Palermo to pay off her huge fee to the man who smuggled her in to the country. Various characters plot against each other and the plots, which draw in people from all the different social strata, spiral out of control as the tug-of-war between these different factions of Sicilian society is fought to the last.

Sud Side Stori

2000

Lee Scratch Perry's Vision of Paradise poster
6.2

Lee Scratch Perry's Vision of Paradise is a unique project in many ways. It is the life story of the legendary musician, but it is not a biography, it is a fairytale documentary! The director followed Lee Perry for thirteen years and discovered an unbelievable story, a revelation, told about and with one of the major protagonists of contemporary music, the other half of the story that has never been told. The movie can be seen as a guide for how to change the world with music, with a positive attitude, mindset or, as Lee Perry calls it, vibration.

Lee Scratch Perry's Vision of Paradise

2015

Film credits

2020s · 2 titles

Series credits