Film / News
‘Marvin: The Movie’ to premiere at the Watershed
Marvin Rees, Bristol first mixed race mayor, has just notched up another record: he’s the first Bristol mayor to be the subject of a minor motion picture. It’s a safe bet that Loraine Blumenthal’s crowd-funded, 80-minute documentary The Mayor’s Race (d’ya see what she did there?) won’t be challenging the Star Wars and Harry Potter flicks for a place in the box office record books, but it does promise a fascinating insight into Rees’s life and politics, with contributions from the likes of his predecessor George Ferguson and community worker/activist Paul Stephenson.
The Mayor’s Race gets its premiere at the Watershed at 3:45pm on Saturday, 3 February, preceded at 2pm by a panel discussion on Britain, Race, & the Challenges to Black Leadership. After the screening, there will be a Q&A with director Loraine Blumenthal, producer Rob Mitchell and Marvin himself.
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Here’s the film’s full official synopsis:
Marvin Rees wants to run for mayor in Bristol. He is eloquent, ambitious and he is mixed-race. 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 and with children of his own, he wants the power to break the cycles of poverty and injustice he’s experienced first hand.
The city Marvin wants to lead has a history on race that still echoes into today. It once grew rich from trading Africans as slaves, sparked a UK civil rights fight to parallel the infamous struggles of the sixties in the US. Then Bristol began an uprising in the inner-city that spread race riots to Britain’s other black ghettos.
Against this historical backdrop Marvin Rees steps into the world of politics. How will he cope with rejection, failure and a deep inner struggle on his journey to the biggest success of his life – becoming the first black mayor of a major European city.
Admission to the premiere is free, but you do need to reserve your ticket in advance. Go here to book.
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