UK director looks to release dancehall film
Dancehall videographer-turned-film director Videoropes wants to use art to shift narratives and tell beautiful, nuanced stories about black people while also championing his Jamaican culture.
“I want to see more ethnic minorities get better opportunities to be in more films, especially Jamaicans, that reflect us and our wonderful, unique culture,” he said.
Videoropes is known in the UK dancehall circles as a ‘dancehall video man’, but, in 2012, he began to experiment with film directing, and he wrote the script and edited and shot his first movie, Reality of the Dancehall. After the movie premiered at the Odeon Cinema in London, he enrolled himself in college where he studied video editing and then went on to the University of Art where he studied film directing and script writing.
In 2014, Videoropes started shooting his second movie Reality of the Dancehall Pt. 2, but lost all the footage because of a defective hard drive. By the time he retrieved it, the pandemic hit. He is now trying to drum up support for the film and will be releasing it online in an episodic format.
“Reality of the Dancehall Pt. 2 explores the life and culture of dancehall: music, money and girls. The film takes you behind the scenes of the glitter and the glam and shows the dark underbelly and the reality of the dancehall. It is an eye-opener,” he said.
The film features characters like ‘Sue’ who tries to use another character ‘ Bigman’ (played by Danny Bless) for money. Bigman, a London don, falls in love with Sue even though he is a married man. Other characters are: ‘Sweeper’, a womaniser, and Big Mac and Bobo, Bigman’s hitmen.