Gê Viana, Radiola de Promessa, 2025. Film still. Courtesy the artist.
Gê Viana, Radiola de Promessa, 2025. Film still. Courtesy the artist.
Raoul Peck, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, 2024. Film still. Courtesy the artist.
Raoul Peck, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, 2024. Film still. Courtesy the artist.
Mira Nair, Mississippi Masala, 1991. Film Still.
Mira Nair, Mississippi Masala, 1991. Film Still.
Mike Leigh, Secrets and Lies, 1996. Film Still.
Mike Leigh, Secrets and Lies, 1996. Film Still.
Free entry
27 Jan - 15 Mar 2026
Assembly Room
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our exhibitions as accessible as possible for every visitor. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
For complete access information about the gallery, please visit https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/.
Joy Gregory Selects… is a film programme curated by the artist to accompany her exhibition ‘Catching Flies with Honey’. Bringing together works that span documentary, fiction and essay film, Gregory’s selection reflects longstanding concerns in her practice with identity, intimacy, and histories of representation. The programme moves across geographies and generations, from personal observation to collective history. On why she chose these particular films, Gregory reflects:
“They resonate with themes in my own work: home, belonging, representation, and cultural memory. Moving between the personal and the global, the films reflect on family, migration, exile, everyday life, and the overlooked.
What unites them is a shared attentiveness, a commitment to looking and listening. Whether through the intimacy of domestic life or the resonance of sound systems and communal ritual, these films demonstrate the power of observation to connect past and present, memory and place.”
11.15am Radiola de Promessa (2025), Gê Viana, 13m 07s
11.30am Secrets and Lies (1996), Dir. Mike Leigh, 2h 22m
13:55 / 18:20* From the Window of My Room (2004), Cao Guimarães, 5m 21s
14:05 / 18:30* Mississippi Masala (1991), Dir. Mira Nair, 1h 58m
16:05 Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (2024), Dir. Raoul Peck, 1h 46m
*Thursday evenings only
Please note that on occasion, when there are other events in the Assembly Room, films may be screened in the Zilkha Auditorium and Studio.
Radiola de Promessa (2025), Gê Viana, 13m 07s
11:15am
In this lyrical short work, Viana reflects on faith, memory and Afro-Brazilian cultural traditions.
“I chose this film, because the vision of the sound systems immediately brought me back to the sound systems of Kingston, Jamaica, of Notting Hill in London, of Moss Side in Manchester, where people gathered to celebrate and enjoy being together. The sound and the music moving your body and your soul. The film shows how reggae, spirituality, and celebration operate as forms of resistance and remembrance. Past and present move together — in drumbeats, radio waves, and communal rituals. The film strongly underlines the essence of Memory and Skin, especially through the idea of YARD: YARD as home, YARD as gathering place, YARD as cultural and spiritual ground.”
Leigh’s powerful social drama centres on a Black British woman’s search for her birth mother, unfolding into a complex portrait of family, race and class in late twentieth-century Britain.
“I selected Secrets and Lies because it reflects the Britain I grew up in and includes formative influences like Up the Junction. It mirrors concerns at the heart of my creative practice, valuing ordinary lives and everyday voices.”
From the Window of My Room (2004), Cao Guimarães,5m 21s
13:55 / 18:20*
Filmed from the artist’s apartment window, this poetic essay film is a meditation on the quiet intimacy of observation.
“I chose this film because it is fundamentally about looking — not doing, not explaining, but simply observing. The camera does not rush or impose meaning; it waits, watches, and allows things to unfold. This resonates with my own practice, which often begins with stillness, attention, and presence.”
Mississippi Masala (1991), Dir. Mira Nair, 1h 58m
14:05 / 18:30*
Set in the American South, Nair’s landmark film traces an interracial love story shaped by migration, displacement and the afterlives of colonialism.
“Connecting personal stories to global history, Mississippi Masala explores home, memory and belonging and shows how colonial legacies continues to shape the present.”
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (2024), Dir. Raoul Peck, 1h 46m
16:05
Peck’s documentary revisits the life and work of South African photographer Ernest Cole, whose images exposed the brutal realities of apartheid.
“This documentary film unites aesthetic strength with political responsibility, capturing the experience of both apartheid and exile. It gives context to significant works in my exhibition like ‘The Handbag Project’, which depicts luxury handbags from Johannesburg during the Apartheid era, as potent symbols of privilege, femininity and exclusion.”
