The Anti-Racist Study Day: What We Do Next
The Anti-Racist Study Day: What We Do Next
Presented by June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive (JGPACA), London Community Video Archive (LCVA) and Dalston CLR James Library. This event is supported by Hackney Council's Black History Season Fund.
Saturday, 25 October 2025
12:00pm – 2:00pm at Dalston CLR James Library
3:00pm – Screening of Coconut Head Generation at Rio Cinema
The Anti-Racist Study Day revisits and reimagines the 1984-85 Greater London Council’s (GLC) Anti-Racist Film Programme. With the rise of openly right wing violence and protests on our streets, racism in media and politics, we want to understand: what does anti-racist organising and education look like today?
The Anti Racist Film Programme was developed in response to calls at the 1983 Third Eye Festival of Third World Cinema for greater access to films by and about Black and global majority people. The programme put together by June Givanni (Programme Coordinator) and Parminder Vir (Ethnic Arts Adviser), brought films and discussions to local schools, youth clubs, libraries, churches, arts and community centres and cinemas across London. To support wider discussion, educational resources were made available for teachers and community workers exploring race, identity, migration and anti-racist resistance through film.
“Films serve many functions: to educate, to entertain, to campaign…”
With this ethos in mind, the event foregrounds films as a tool for conversation and dialogue as critical sites of education.
The Anti-Racist Study Day will provide participants the opportunity to engage with:
The work of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive (JGPACA), London Community Video Archive (LCVA) and Dalston CLR James Library.
Excerpts from a wide-range of films from these archives, such as archive videos of classroom discussions on race in Hackney in the 70s and 80s, alongside selected works by Sankofa Film and Video Collective, who were active in East London and featured in the Anti-Racist Film Programme
An archival display
Related reading materials
A public forum for discussion and debate
Together we will walk to Rio Cinema to continue the conversation with a special screening of Alain Kassanda’s documentary Coconut Head Generation (2023), which shows how a film discussion group formed an integral part of a series of mass protests against police brutality in Nigeria.
This event is curated by the JGPACA team (Phoebe Beckett Chingono, Damilola Lemomu and benjin).
