The Colony with From Scratch

The Drum and Birmingham Jazz in partnership with Flatpack Film Festival presents The Colony Screening and Live Score by From Scratch. This screening of The Colony will be a unique experience with From Scratch, a Birmingham-based jazz band, providing music to frame and counter-point the film. From Scratch are a quartet with deep roots in the communities that are featured in The Colony.

 

Filmed at a variety of locations in Birmingham in 1963, The Colony is remarkable for its time in giving a voice to working-class settlers from the Caribbean. This unique screening and live score performed by From Scratch will add a new dimension to what is already a compelling documentary.

 

The film uses no narration or commentary, allowing its participants; including a railwayman from St Kitts, a bus conductor from Jamaica, a family of singers from Trinidad and a nurse from Barbados to speak intelligently and articulately about their experiences of Britain. Key members of the band played with Andy Hamilton’s Blue Notes including Andy’s son Mark on sax, Ralf Decambre on guitar, Ray “Pablo” Brown on bass and Miles Levin on drums. Their musical backgrounds include the kind of music that the people featured in the film would have been listening to in the 60s – jazz, calypso, ska, reggae, soul and gospel.

 

The gig will be set up in a café style with tables and a Caribbean feel. The film with intro and end music lasts an hour and a quarter and after a short break the band will play a half hour additional set.

 

This event is a co-production for the Flatpack Festival by The Drum and Birmingham Jazz.

 

The film is cert PG and the running time is 60 mins.

 

Tickets are £7 and £5 for concessions including members and students.

 

Tickets available from the Drum