As many reviews of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe have noted, the miniseries derives its somewhat unusual title from a West Indian proverb made popular in a Bob Marley song: “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.” This pithy adage evokes, with a tone of striking confidence, the central theme of McQueen’s ambitious five-part anthology of stories—namely, the struggle of London’s West Indian community against the forces of institutional racism, state repression, and police violence.
Keep chipping away at these unjust structures of dominance for long enough, McQueen’s miniseries more than suggests, and eventually they’ll fall to the ground. But it would be easy to miss a key word embedded in that proverb, one which is central not only to the thematic basis of Small Axe, but to its very construction: “we.”
Composed of five self-contained films, each telling a distinct story about the joys and,...
Keep chipping away at these unjust structures of dominance for long enough, McQueen’s miniseries more than suggests, and eventually they’ll fall to the ground. But it would be easy to miss a key word embedded in that proverb, one which is central not only to the thematic basis of Small Axe, but to its very construction: “we.”
Composed of five self-contained films, each telling a distinct story about the joys and,...
- 5/12/2023
- by Keith Watson
- Slant Magazine
It is often hard enough to conjure the right mood for one installment of an anthology series, but what if your task is five times that? Music supervisor Ed Bailie was tasked by Academy Award-nominated director Steve McQueen to do just that for “Small Axe,” a quintet of period-specific films about Black life in England ranging from the 1960s to the 1980s, touching on social topics from police brutality to the failings of the education system to a raging house party’s effect on young lives. “We used about 80 or 90 songs in the course of ‘Small Axe,'” says Bailie, “and each film had different music illustrated in the scripts, so every part carved their own identities throughout”.
For “Mangrove,” the lengthiest and arguably most-charged entry that opens “Axe,” Bailie took his cue from the Trinidadian-settled Notting Hill of the late 1960s — far removed from the gentrified neighborhood seen years...
For “Mangrove,” the lengthiest and arguably most-charged entry that opens “Axe,” Bailie took his cue from the Trinidadian-settled Notting Hill of the late 1960s — far removed from the gentrified neighborhood seen years...
- 6/14/2021
- by Jason Clark
- The Wrap
For music supervisor Ed Bailie, working on Steve McQueen‘s five-part anthology “Small Axe” was “the equivalent of working on five features.” Instead of a single overarching narrative in a film or a TV series, this presented the challenge of “individual tales, each with their own musical identity rooted within an overarching concept that Steve was getting across.” Watch our exclusive video interview with Bailie above.
The five films tell different stories, but all of them explore the experiences of West Indian immigrants living in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, from the true story of Black protestors railroaded by the police and the justice system in “Mangrove” to a fictional account of a joyous house party in “Lovers Rock.” A lot of the music had already “been written into the script,” Bailie says, which “for us as music supervisors — for myself and my colleague Abi Leland — was a...
The five films tell different stories, but all of them explore the experiences of West Indian immigrants living in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, from the true story of Black protestors railroaded by the police and the justice system in “Mangrove” to a fictional account of a joyous house party in “Lovers Rock.” A lot of the music had already “been written into the script,” Bailie says, which “for us as music supervisors — for myself and my colleague Abi Leland — was a...
- 6/2/2021
- by Daniel Montgomery
- Gold Derby
A version of this story first appeared in the Documentaries issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.
The past is ravishingly alive in “Small Axe,” a five-film anthology directed by Steve McQueen. Originally scheduled to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (which was cancelled due to Covid-19), three of the films in the series eventually screened to raves at the virtual and drive-in New York Film Festival in September, prior to debuting on Amazon Prime.
Though not eligible for next April’s Academy Awards, the anthology has won awards from major critics’ organizations in New York, for Best Cinematography, and Los Angeles, for Best Picture(s).
Set between 1968 and the mid-’80s in London’s West Indian community, the movies include a real-life courtroom drama (“Mangrove”), a quasi-musical (“Lovers Rock”), and a police exposé, all pulsating with McQueen’s primal themes of justice, injustice and love. The filmmaker spoke to TheWrap...
The past is ravishingly alive in “Small Axe,” a five-film anthology directed by Steve McQueen. Originally scheduled to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (which was cancelled due to Covid-19), three of the films in the series eventually screened to raves at the virtual and drive-in New York Film Festival in September, prior to debuting on Amazon Prime.
Though not eligible for next April’s Academy Awards, the anthology has won awards from major critics’ organizations in New York, for Best Cinematography, and Los Angeles, for Best Picture(s).
Set between 1968 and the mid-’80s in London’s West Indian community, the movies include a real-life courtroom drama (“Mangrove”), a quasi-musical (“Lovers Rock”), and a police exposé, all pulsating with McQueen’s primal themes of justice, injustice and love. The filmmaker spoke to TheWrap...
- 12/24/2020
- by Joe McGovern
- The Wrap
Steve McQueen’s five-film opus Small Axe concludes with Friday’s release of Education, the story of a boy named Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy), whose difficulty with reading has him reassigned to a school for the “educationally subnormal” — a.k.a. students for whom the British school system has abandoned all hope. Education completes a quintet of remarkable stories set between 1968 and 1984, some rooted in fact, others inspired by the experiences of the 12 Years a Slave director’s mother and other Englanders of West Indian descent.
[All 5 Films Are Streaming on Amazon Prime Video]
The first installment,...
[All 5 Films Are Streaming on Amazon Prime Video]
The first installment,...
- 12/18/2020
- by Alan Sepinwall
- Rollingstone.com
Helen Scott served as production designer on all five films in Steve McQueen’s Amazon anthology series “Small Axe,” but the task wasn’t as intimidating as it sounds. The reason? She had all five scripts at once.
“It became daunting later on, but having the five scripts in front of us, it was kind of doable because we could work out what the art was and where each film sat within the arc and get an overall feel for the whole project,” Scott says during Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: TV Production Design panel (watch above). “We never lost sight of the fact that all of these stories are connected. They’re all of the same family. It was just trying to [find] the nuance of each film. Each film came from a slightly different time zone — they were all set in different times, they were all in London,...
“It became daunting later on, but having the five scripts in front of us, it was kind of doable because we could work out what the art was and where each film sat within the arc and get an overall feel for the whole project,” Scott says during Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: TV Production Design panel (watch above). “We never lost sight of the fact that all of these stories are connected. They’re all of the same family. It was just trying to [find] the nuance of each film. Each film came from a slightly different time zone — they were all set in different times, they were all in London,...
- 12/14/2020
- by Joyce Eng
- Gold Derby
Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock,” one of five movies in the director’s “Small Axe” anthology on Amazon, is a dreamy, sensual fantasia of a film, a 68-minute evocation of one Saturday night at a dance party in 1980 London. The story follows Martha (newcomer Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) as she sneaks out from her family home to attend “Blues Night” at a house in London’s West Indies community that’s been transformed into one big reggae dance floor.
In the peak scene, she dances with a young man she’s met (Micheal Ward) to the rhythm of Janet Kay’s silky “Silly Games.” And when the music stops, the crowd keeps singing, entranced by the fevered bliss of the song.
McQueen has focused on the Black experience in all of the “Small Axe” films. Several of them depict real events: “Mangrove” is a courtroom drama and “Red, White and Blue...
In the peak scene, she dances with a young man she’s met (Micheal Ward) to the rhythm of Janet Kay’s silky “Silly Games.” And when the music stops, the crowd keeps singing, entranced by the fevered bliss of the song.
McQueen has focused on the Black experience in all of the “Small Axe” films. Several of them depict real events: “Mangrove” is a courtroom drama and “Red, White and Blue...
- 12/3/2020
- by Joe McGovern
- The Wrap
There’s a strong chance that anyone recommending Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock — the second chapter of his ongoing Small Axe film series, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video — has gone out of their way to mention that scene. The moment in question, set to Janet Kay’s “Silly Games,” is indeed a showstopper: improvisational and free, the kind of moment in which the bright screen separating a movie from its audience suddenly seems malleable, porous. All of a sudden, you’re no longer watching a movie, but a part of one.
- 11/28/2020
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
If you’ve seen “Hunger,” “Shame,” or his Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave,” you know that director Steve McQueen has a singular gift for plunging viewers into his characters’ central nervous systems, even when they’re undergoing sensations you’d just as soon avoid. With “Lovers Rock,” one of five segments in his upcoming miniseries “Small Axe,” that gift is used for delight. It’s a great kick-off for this year’s New York Film Festival, where “Lovers Rock” will be the opening-night film.
A “one wild night” movie akin to “Dazed and Confused” or “American Graffiti,” “Lovers Rock” takes us to a West Indian “Blues party” in 1979 London. As with any such gathering of young people to flirt, dance, and listen to music, there are friendships and rivalries, intra-community and intra-family squabbles and alliances, the promise of love and the threat of violence.
Specifically, for 2020 pandemic audiences, there is...
A “one wild night” movie akin to “Dazed and Confused” or “American Graffiti,” “Lovers Rock” takes us to a West Indian “Blues party” in 1979 London. As with any such gathering of young people to flirt, dance, and listen to music, there are friendships and rivalries, intra-community and intra-family squabbles and alliances, the promise of love and the threat of violence.
Specifically, for 2020 pandemic audiences, there is...
- 11/16/2020
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
‘Lovers Rock’ Review: Steve McQueen’s ‘Small Axe’ Film Has One of the Best Dance Parties Ever Filmed
After drilling into dreary subjects for five movies, Steve McQueen appears to have discovered joy. The dark personal and social struggles at the center of those earlier projects are right there in their titles, which gives “Lovers Rock” an immediate juxtaposition, and it plays that way, too.
It remains to be seen exactly how this concise tale of West Indian Londoners at an all-night rager fits into the larger context of “Small Axe,” the BBC-produced anthology five feature-length stories about the Black West Indian struggles to which “Lovers Rock” belongs. These may add layers of subtext to “Lovers Rock” beyond its immediate resonance, positioning an intimate drama within the wider fabric of racial tensions. But this swift installment sings its own tune, too — or, rather, it marches to one helluva beat.
Set across a single night in 1980 and loaded with a soundtrack from the eponymous reggae music, “Lovers Rock” is...
It remains to be seen exactly how this concise tale of West Indian Londoners at an all-night rager fits into the larger context of “Small Axe,” the BBC-produced anthology five feature-length stories about the Black West Indian struggles to which “Lovers Rock” belongs. These may add layers of subtext to “Lovers Rock” beyond its immediate resonance, positioning an intimate drama within the wider fabric of racial tensions. But this swift installment sings its own tune, too — or, rather, it marches to one helluva beat.
Set across a single night in 1980 and loaded with a soundtrack from the eponymous reggae music, “Lovers Rock” is...
- 9/17/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
In the most transporting scene of Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock,” we’re at a London house party that has just hit its smoky seductive dirty-dancing groove. It’s 1980, and most of the revelers have West Indian roots. The men, in their natty duds and rasta hats, stand against the wall smoking joints, looking for women to tug by the arm onto the dance floor. Then a hypnotic sound comes on: It’s “Silly Games,” Janet Kay’s delectably lulling reggae-pop anthem, a hit in the U.K. in 1979. With its melting chords and disco flutes and Kay’s voice soaring into an ecstatic high register, the song hits the party like opium.
The dancers nuzzle up to each other, enraptured by the sheer sway of it, moving from slow dancing to slow grooving to slow foreplay. Is that a drop of sweat rolling down the wall? The scene becomes...
The dancers nuzzle up to each other, enraptured by the sheer sway of it, moving from slow dancing to slow grooving to slow foreplay. Is that a drop of sweat rolling down the wall? The scene becomes...
- 9/17/2020
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Music legend Dennis Bovell is Milton in Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
At the New York Film Festival press conference, held on Zoom this morning for Lovers Rock, the Opening Night selection, my question on Jacqueline Durran’s (Greta Gerwig’s Little Women) costumes to director/screenwriter Steve McQueen and the stars of his film, Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn and Micheal Ward, was posed to them by Film at Lincoln Center’s host Dennis Lim, Director of Programming for the festival. Lovers Rock is part of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, co-written by Courttia Newland. The film is a fictional account that takes place in London's West Indian community at a sound system house party in the early 1980s. Music legend Dennis Bovell is in a memorable scene during an extended a cappella rendition of Janet Kay’s Silly Games.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Jacqueline Durran’s costumes are...
At the New York Film Festival press conference, held on Zoom this morning for Lovers Rock, the Opening Night selection, my question on Jacqueline Durran’s (Greta Gerwig’s Little Women) costumes to director/screenwriter Steve McQueen and the stars of his film, Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn and Micheal Ward, was posed to them by Film at Lincoln Center’s host Dennis Lim, Director of Programming for the festival. Lovers Rock is part of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, co-written by Courttia Newland. The film is a fictional account that takes place in London's West Indian community at a sound system house party in the early 1980s. Music legend Dennis Bovell is in a memorable scene during an extended a cappella rendition of Janet Kay’s Silly Games.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Jacqueline Durran’s costumes are...
- 9/17/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
There’s a heady, hypnotic interlude midway through Steve McQueen’s dreamy celebration of Black community and culture, Lovers Rock, when Janet Kay’s 1979 hit “Silly Games” plays out on the turntable and is taken up by the people crammed into the suburban London living room where a house party is being held. For a full five minutes they continue singing a cappella — the women in particular — their voices matched by the ecstasy of their swaying bodies. The massive speakers remain quiet and the only other sound is the shuffle of feet on wooden floorboards and an ...
- 9/17/2020
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
There’s a heady, hypnotic interlude midway through Steve McQueen’s dreamy celebration of Black community and culture, Lovers Rock, when Janet Kay’s 1979 hit “Silly Games” plays out on the turntable and is taken up by the people crammed into the suburban London living room where a house party is being held. For a full five minutes they continue singing a cappella — the women in particular — their voices matched by the ecstasy of their swaying bodies. The massive speakers remain quiet and the only other sound is the shuffle of feet on wooden floorboards and an ...
- 9/17/2020
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Lover's rock influenced the Police and Sade, and gave women a voice in reggae – so why was it sidelined in its native Britain?
In 1979, Janet Kay's piercing falsetto was one of the defining sounds of the summer. Silly Games, her bittersweet ode to a faltering relationship, enjoyed heavy radio play, thanks in part to a subtle arrangement by songwriter/producer Dennis Bovell, a distinctive drum pattern from Aswad's Angus Gaye and distribution on a Warners subsidiary. The song reached No 2, the highest chart placing for a black, British woman at that point. It also signalled a coming of age for lover's rock, the softened, British reggae sub-genre that focused on romance, but, as noted in Menelik Shabazz's documentary The Story of Lover's Rock, involved so much more than setting teenaged heartbreak to a reggae beat.
Though a primarily underground phenomenon, lover's rock influenced pop acts such as the Police,...
In 1979, Janet Kay's piercing falsetto was one of the defining sounds of the summer. Silly Games, her bittersweet ode to a faltering relationship, enjoyed heavy radio play, thanks in part to a subtle arrangement by songwriter/producer Dennis Bovell, a distinctive drum pattern from Aswad's Angus Gaye and distribution on a Warners subsidiary. The song reached No 2, the highest chart placing for a black, British woman at that point. It also signalled a coming of age for lover's rock, the softened, British reggae sub-genre that focused on romance, but, as noted in Menelik Shabazz's documentary The Story of Lover's Rock, involved so much more than setting teenaged heartbreak to a reggae beat.
Though a primarily underground phenomenon, lover's rock influenced pop acts such as the Police,...
- 9/22/2011
- by David Katz
- The Guardian - Film News
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