REGGAE music continues to take a foothold down under. The music will form the centrepiece of a week-long film festival being held in Australia starting this weekend.

The festival is being staged under the theme Yard! Dub and Reggae on Film, and will be held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).

Curated by Richard Sowada, Lisa Palermo and Kate Welsman, the series will feature films ranging from Ted Bafaloukos’ 1978 Rastafarian classic Rockers and Franco Rosso’s 1980 underground classic Babylon to Gus Berger’s recent Duke Vin and the Birth of Ska and 2009’s Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae.

Internet reports have quoted head of film programmes at ACMI, Richard Sowada noting the importance of the genre. “Politics and music are a big part of our film programmes, so when opportunities arise for us to explore both at one time it is difficult to resist. The enormous global impact of reggae, the characters, the powerful aesthetic and the experimentation are inspiring — and the music… well, it just soars.”

“I was enamoured, floored, by the power and breadth of music coming out of Jamaica at the time,” he says. “I’m not a musician but as a visual person, I was trying to consolidate what I was feeling and convey the astonishing music that was happening.”