Film programme gets to grips with structural racism

The Goodman Gallery launches the “Living Just Enough” online film programme on Tuesday. The programme is seven films spanning three decades, from the 1990s to the present, expanding on the themes of the exhibition of the same title currently hosted at the Goodman Gallery in London.

According to the gallery, the selected films echo the exhibition’s attempt to acknowledge and contextualise the current global reckoning with white supremacy and structural racism led by the Black Lives Matter movement. Taken together, they try to contextualise this moment from different perspectives, intersecting issues of race with gender, class, colonial history and the politics of joy. The exhibition takes its title from a refrain in Stevie Wonder’s 1974 hit Living for the City. The song tells the story of a young black man who moves to New York from Mississippi and his experiences of hardships born of systemic racism. These difficulties reflect challenges faced by black people around the world. “Living Just Enough” features work by artists of varying generations who respond to these conditions from historic perspectives and in relation to the current moment — a state of deepened rupture exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The diverse practices of each artist intersect with different forms of activism which oppose gender-based violence, homophobia, transphobia and the erasure of the culture of indigenous peoples.