Lee 'Scratch' Perry's Vision Of Paradise (Fufoofilm/Cadiz Music)

Some of you might have seen this film, which took  Schaner close to 15 (!) years to complete, on television already, but please know that for the DVD release about three hours (!) of extras were added, including a 45-minute "making of", director's commentary and a number of deleted scenes. Volker prefers to describe 'Vision Of Paradise' as a fairytale documentary, an effect that is at least in part evoked by supplementing the filmed parts with wonderfully strange animations, The work of Romanian artist Maria Sargarodschi, who drew inspiration from Ethiopian church iconography, Lee Perry's artwork and even The Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine'. Now Perry's Switzerland studio was destroyed by fire, this documentary also serves as an immortalization of Scratch's's "secret laboratory". In addition to Perry, a cornucopia of befriended artists were also interviewed (we recognized, among others, Mad Professor, Dennis Bovell, Adrian Sherwood, Nick Manasseh and of course David Katz, author of the Perry-biography 'People Funny Boy'). Over the years yours truly has seen numerous documentaries featuring or about Lee Perry, but if you really want to attempt to understand the man's wondrous and sometimes bizarre universe (the cover of the DVD doesn't feature the slogan: "The one movie that explains it all!" for no reason) then 'Vision Of Paradise' is definitely a must see.