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By Peter Della Penna

For a 20-year stretch from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the West Indies were the dominant force in world cricket. Fans growing up in the current generation have missed out on the excitement and unique style they brought to the game, but filmmaker Stevan Riley has fond memories of calypso cricket filling up summers in the UK.

“As a youngster, I’d follow cricket when the West Indies turned up,” said Riley in a recent interview with DreamCricket. “There was just something, there was an excitement in the air in a summer when the West Indies would arrive and just the look of these guys, in their whites with their medallions. They just seemed a lot more imposing and threatening than the English lineup and so you sat up and paid attention because they were playing an exciting style of cricket and a lethal game as well. In many respects, you’d be watching just expecting very often for these English batsmen to get severely hurt and it made for sort of quite extreme viewing.”

All these years later, Riley was surprised that no one had taken an in-depth look at the cast of characters that made up one of the most successful teams in sports history. So Riley seized the opportunity to take on that responsibility and the result is an 82-minute documentary called “Fire in Babylon”, which will be making its North American debut at the 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York City from April 20-May 1.

Image (right) - "Fire in Babylon" poster. [Courtesy: "Fire in Babylon" Facebook page.]

“That they were the most successful team in sporting history meant that they deserved some attention, but then when you put on top of it the style of their play, the effects of that style, how it changed the game completely, the motivation behind it that they were in the era of the 70s and 80s when there was so much social and physical change, when you find out that the West Indies cricket team was essentially making a statement for black peoples worldwide in terms of reforming attitudes to rather primitive stereotypes that existed about the black community,” said Riley. “They proved I think indelibly the potential of the West Indies and that black people worldwide would not be dictated to and most clearly on the cricket field.”

Through the research and interviews he did with players from that era, Riley found that there was a strong influence from Rastafarian culture on the team. The title of his film comes from Rastafarian slang and he uses a Reggae soundtrack for his film, including three songs by Bob Marley.

“The film had a very much Rastafarian spirit to it,” said Riley. “Babylon is very much a Rastafarian word. Babylon refers to the kind of systems of oppression, wherever they exist, systems that hold people down on account of their race and color or any other kind of system of prejudice. The fire is clearly what was done to overturn that, disrupt that through the West Indies style of play.”

Riley spent a lot of the time researching the characters by reading biographies and essays about them to learn as much as possible. He also interviewed players from other countries who played against the West Indians of that era to gain more insight. But when it came time to edit the film, he opted against including those in the final product in order to tell the story from a strictly West Indian point of view.

“I interviewed a lot of opposition players, a lot of white players, but they don’t appear in the film,” said Riley. “It’s only the West Indians. I stripped it down to their voice so that the film would really allow us to enter into their perspective of that time.”

During his interviews with the West Indian players, Riley uncovered some of the hidden hardships and obstacles that the players had to overcome which were not publicized at the time.

“In terms of the discoveries, some of them were quite shocking and these came out in interviews, things that weren’t actually in the books, about the level of racism that people encountered,” said Riley. “They’d have letters pushed under their door when they were in hotel rooms in Australia and in England, kind of really vile stuff, racist stuff, all designed to intimidate. They would face a lot of heckling and verbal abuse. You find this early on, it affected their motivation. I don’t think it made them hateful or cynical, but it certainly made them realize they had a definite point to prove.”

Despite the fact that the West Indians struck plenty of fear in the opposition, Riley was fascinated that they maintained good relationships off the pitch with players from other countries and that they had the capacity to forge dual personas as both mean and free-spirited.

“I was trying to find out could these fast bowlers, was it a contradiction that they could bowl a lethal ball that could potentially kill you and yet still be nice guys,” said Riley. “When I interviewed the opposition players, they were very fond of the West Indies guys even at the time. There was a definite spirit the West Indies brought to the game. Yeah they introduced a very aggressive tough style of cricket, but at the same time they also had another part of the West Indian brand or character trait, to play with a smile on your face and to really love the game. That was the contradiction that the West Indies team managed quite well. They would play terrifying cricket, but at the same time they were real crowd pleasers. They saw these guys were enjoying their game and they were lighthearted with it.”

“They were going to play cricket that was designed to win and through winning, they would prove themselves and get that respect. Several players like Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall, they’re some of the most adored in the game in cricketing circles as characters. You might have had some imposing or threatening characters, scary characters like Colin Croft and maybe Andy Roberts but even Andy I could tell when I interviewed him he seemed like a nice guy, fairly quiet, but obviously very thoughtful, determined and passionate about his cricket and dedicated to winning but a nice guy underneath. I don’t think any of these players were sort of like psychopaths. That is the stereotype of fast bowlers but they were all nice guys.”

It took Riley more than a year to produce the final product. The logistical hurdles of traveling from island to island or country to country to find and interview players took a bit of time to negotiate. However, getting all the rights to use footage, images and music was an even bigger mountain to climb.

“It was tricky because everyone is kind of spread out amongst all the islands and England,” said Riley. “Everyone’s got their professional commitments. It was tough pinning everyone down. I was out in the West Indies for five weeks moving between the islands and then did some other interviews in the UK, but I managed to get everyone that I wanted actually. All the key players in the team were interviewed so it really does tell their story collectively.”

“We had to spend about six to seven months getting all the music rights. There’s a lot of music and archive in the film and it took forever to bring that stuff in, I mean a real administrative nightmare. The video footage was spread amongst many different channels, the photographic between umpteen different photographers. Then there’s 30 music tracks in the film and they all needed clearing.”

The experience of making “Fire in Babylon” was completely different to “Blue Blood”, Riley’s 2007 documentary chronicling five students attempting to make the University of Oxford boxing club in order to square off against students from Cambridge. Riley says that he acted as a fly on the wall to capture the Oxbridge rivalry whereas “Fire in Babylon” was more of an archive piece, but he found both subjects equally enjoyable to make a movie out of and it’s one of the reasons he has dedicated his time to making sports documentaries.

“I’ve looked at other films and other projects not in the field of sport, but I’m a big sports fan and I think that sport is a very fertile ground for quite epic stories and inspirational stuff because there’s a lot of high drama in sport and in some cases it’s really underpinned by a bigger story and a deeper motivation so it’s a nice kind of arena to work within,” said Riley.

“Fire in Babylon” premiered at the London Film Festival in October. It also appeared at the Glasgow Film Festival in February and the Adelaide Film Festival in March. The first of four screenings at Tribeca will take place on Saturday April 23 at 8:30 p.m. Riley hopes that sports fans and non-sports fans in New York will view the film with equal satisfaction.

“I think it’s a good inspirational, feel-good story about a genuine triumph for the underdog,” said Riley. “There wasn’t really more a disenfranchised bunch than the West Indies, this small group of islands in the Caribbean with a tiny population, combined population less than Sydney in Australia, and yet they come out as world beaters and for so long. It’s the story of the most successful team in world history who came from the most humble beginnings. It’s a feel good film with a feel good soundtrack.”