The Mayor’s Race: Premiere Event – Screening & Discussion

Lively panel discussion, exploring the prospects for black political representation in the UK is followed by the Premiere…

Screening: 80min documentary, The Mayor’s Race.
A film by Loraine Blumenthal

Followed by Q&A about the film.

THE MAYOR’S RACE –

Marvin wants to run for mayor but is his background a big deal? He is an eloquent, ambitious and ‘mixed-race’. For him, growing up in Bristol’s ghettos meant food on the table was not always easy to come by. He saw his black and white family, his friends and community suffering from poverty and exclusion. Now in his 40’s with children of his own, he wants the power to break cycles of poverty and injustice.

The city Marvin wants to lead has a history on ‘race’ that he and other Bristolians still grapple with today. It once grew rich from trading Africans as slaves; sparked a UK ‘civil rights’ fight to parallel the struggles of the sixties in the US and later began an ‘uprising’ in the inner-city that spread ‘race riots’ to Britain’s other black ghettos.

Now, Marvin Rees steps into the world of politics as a complete amateur. Confronted by rejection, failure and a deep inner struggle with identity he eventually meets the biggest success and challenge of his life, when Bristol makes him the first black mayor of a major European city.