Our unique June Salon is the first showing in the Midlands of Every Cook Can Govern, the first feature-length documentary to explore the life, writings and politics of the great Trinidad-born revolutionary C.L.R. James who died in Brixton in 1989.

This historical tour-de-force interweaves never before seen footage of C.L.R. James with unique testimony from those he knew, alongside interviews with the world’s most eminent scholars of James’ life, work and politics. Through a challenging overview of his life and his thoughts on colonialism to cricket, from Marxism to the movies, from reading to revolution, what emerges in this film is an understanding of what it meant to be an uncompromising revolutionary in the 20th Century.

Every Cook Can Govern marks the culmination of a three year multimedia project arranged by the education charity WORLDwrite and its Citizen TV station WORLDbytes. Its unique production history – crowd-funded, crowd-featured and crowd-filmed – does credit to James’ conviction that every cook can govern. The film brings to life James’ thought and shows what it means to be uncompromising in one’s principles to the very end and to fearlessly question received wisdom and the world around us.

Ceri Dingle, the producer and Director of WORLDwrite, will introduce the film. We hope you can join us.

Praise for Every Cook Can Govern:

‘I would encourage everyone to see Every Cook Can Govern. And let C.L.R. James be your guide: you will have a world to discover, and there is no better source that I know of in doing so than this labour of love from the makers of what is truly a heroic, magnificent work of art!’
- Professor Robert A. Hill, Literary Executor of C.L.R. James