DVD, Digital Release: White Riot

Digital, DVD Release Date: Dec. 15, 2020
Price: DVD $24.95
Studio: Film Movement

The music-filled documentary White Riot from director Rubika Shah, looks at the Britain’s Rock Against Racism (RAR) movement of the late Seventies, which fought against the rise of the National Front, a far-right and fascist political party.

The roots movement swept across the U.K. and Europe and culminated in a 100,000+ person march and a legendary concert event – a sort of Woodstock meets the March on Washington, punk-style.

Expanding on her documentary short White Riot: London, Shah’s film charts the rise of RAR, formed in 1976, prompted by “music’s biggest colonialist” Eric Clapton and his support of racist MP Enoch Powell. Blending new interviews with RAR staff and musicians with archival footage, the film zooms in on RAR’s multicultural punk and reggae gigs, which provided rallying points for resistance to the National Front. The campaign grew from “Temporary Hoarding,” the movement’s fanzine to 1978’s huge antifascist concert in Victoria Park, featuring X-Ray Spex, Tom Robinson, Steel Pulse and The Clash, whose rock star charisma and gale-force conviction took RAR’s message to the masses.