Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine turns thirty next year, and there is a case to be made that it has grown more relevant with each passing decade rather than less. The 1995 French film — shot in a monochrome that seems to have borrowed its palette from the mood of its subject, the fractured lives of three young men on a Paris banlieue on the edge of explosion — won Kassovitz the Best Director prize at Cannes and has never quite left the cultural conversation since.
To mark the anniversary, London’s Southbank Centre and the BFI have announced a one-off screening at the Royal Festival Hall on 19 January, with Asian Dub Foundation performing their reworked live score to the film in real time. Tickets are on sale now.
It is a fitting pairing, and one with history behind it. ADF first premiered their interpretation of the score at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2001 before bringing it to the Southbank Centre itself, for David Bowie’s Meltdown the following year. More than two decades on, the band’s response to the film — a collision of jungle rhythms, dub bass lines, and the particular urgency that has always characterised their live work — feels as alive as it ever did. The band were among the first in the world to pioneer what has come to be called the ‘cineconcert’ format, and this remains their most celebrated contribution to it.
The performance will feature Steve Chandra Savale, Jamil Ahmed and Brian Fairbairn. It is the band’s tenth performance at the Southbank Centre, a relationship that has grown across thirty years and three separate Meltdown festivals.
Asian Dub Foundation are long-standing clients of Dancing Turtle. Over the years we have supported their digital activity across a number of projects — including the website, social media and mobile app development for the release of their album A History of Now. If you haven’t seen La Haine, here is your occasion. If you have, you will know exactly why this matters. Details and tickets via the Southbank Centre website.
