''The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry'' is a

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

about the

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...

-winning Jamaican music icon

Lee "Scratch" Perry Lee "Scratch" Perry (born Rainford Hugh Perry; 20 March 1936 – 29 August 2021) was a Jamaican record producer, composer and singer noted for his innovative studio techniques and production style. Perry was a pioneer in the 1970s development o ...

. The film is narrated by

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

winner

Benicio Del Toro Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez (born February 19, 1967) is a Puerto Rican actor and producer. He has garnered critical acclaim and numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, two Screen ...

and directed by American Filmmakers

Ethan Higbee Ethan Higbee (also known as nahte) is an American filmmaker, music producer and gallerist living in Ojai, California. He is most known for his films Red Apples Falling and The Upsetter, a documentary about Lee Scratch Perry. In 2010 he opened ...

and

Adam Bhala Lough Adam Bhala Lough is an American film director, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker from Fairfax, Virginia. Known for his ability to authentically dramatize subcultures and popular youth cultures, several of Lough’s films have been selected ...

. The film premiered at the

SXSW Film Festival South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, T ...

in March 2008 and had its theatrical release in March 2011, going on to screen at more than 80 theatres world wide. The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry was entered into the Criterion Collection in February 2022.

Production

The filmmakers got Lee Perry's approval to begin making the documentary in early 2004 when they brought him $5,000 in a paper bag, per his request, to a dinner with Perry's ex-wives and all his children in London. The film was financed by an Argentinian trucking company. Higbee and Lough flew to Switzerland where Perry was living in a small town called

Einsiedeln Einsiedeln () is a municipality and district in the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland known for its monastery, the Benedictine Einsiedeln Abbey, established in the 10th century. History Early history There was no permanent settlement in the area ...

and interviewed Perry for eight days, getting him to recount his life story.

Style

The documentary relies singularly on the interviews with Perry and eschews the normal talking-head interviews to tell the story. Lough has stated this was a specific choice he and Higbee made.

"''We only wanted Lee's voice in the film; we wanted Lee to tell his story. We really felt like the history of reggae has been, in a way, hijacked by a white perspective. It comes from such a painfully colonialist perspective. We actually went and interviewed tons of these people — from
Adrian Sherwood Adrian Maxwell Sherwood (born 20 January 1958, London, England) is an English record producer specialising in the genre of dub music. He has created a distinctive production style based on the application of dub effects and dub mixing techniques ...
to Chris Blackwell — as research in a way. But we just had no interest in trotting out the white man to tell the story or even comment on Lee. I think that the Caribbean voice, the Afro-Caribbean voice, is often kind of forgotten in the story of Black history. So to have an opportunity to have a Jamaican man tell his story, the way that he lived it — whether it's correct or incorrect, or, you know, revisionist, or whatever — is, I think, a duty of a filmmaker.'' -
Adam Bhala Lough Adam Bhala Lough is an American film director, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker from Fairfax, Virginia. Known for his ability to authentically dramatize subcultures and popular youth cultures, several of Lough’s films have been selected ...
in Grammy.com interview.'"

Higbee and Lough crafted the film much like a collage, taking turns editing small pieces and improving on top of each other's work over the course of many years.

References

External links

* Documentary films about music and musicians 2008 films Reggae films American documentary films 2008 documentary films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films {{music-documentary-film-stub