African Screen Network has announced the exclusive release at Cape Town’s Labia cinema and Johannesburg’s The Bioscope of Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck’s acclaimed, multi-award winning, Oscar nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro from 6 October, 2017.
Credited as ‘written by James Baldwin” this resonant and insightful film is a striking work of storytelling that uses Baldwin’s words, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, in a cinematic essay that is a challenging and incisive examination about race in America.
Archival material
In 1979, author James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends – Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin’s death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of his manuscript.
In his incendiary documentary Peck imagines the book Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin’s original words and a trove of rich archival material. I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter in a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond.
Baldwin’s prophetic passages
Beginning with Baldwin’s pitch to his agent, the film then links to historical moments with the slain men, hopping through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s personal essays with his public statements. And in a bold present-day challenge, Peck uses Baldwin’s more prophetic passages to flash-forward through time to images from Ferguson, the Obama inauguration, and race murders in a seamless melding of the racially charged tragedies of today with those of the civil rights movement. It’s both astounding and shameful that Baldwin’s writings explain the past, yet sound like they could have been published last week.
African Screen Network’s take is that this exclusive release is required viewing as a crash-course in racial relations, and also a compelling overview, and for some perhaps, an introduction – to Baldwin’s work and character. And as South Africans dealing with ongoing controversy, anger, debate and deliberation on matters of race and power I Am Not Your Negro has a direct and powerful significance for local filmgoers.
Khanyo Mjamba of African Screen Network adds, “The importance of I Am Not Your Negro lies not only in how it pays homage to the work of the literary tour-de-force that is James Baldwin, but also how it crafts a visual narrative that speaks to the condition of being Black in America and being Black anywhere in the world.”
Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote, “the film is unsparing as history and enthralling as biography. It’s an evocation of a passionate soul in a tumultuous era, a film that uses Baldwin’s spoken words, and his notes for an unfinished book, to illuminate the struggle for civil rights.” The film, which was a Indie box office hit prompted A.O. Scott of The New York Times to say it was, “A life-altering documentary… whatever you think about the past and future of what used to be called ‘race relations’, this movie will make you think again, and may even change your mind.”
What: I Am Not Your Negro film
When: From 6 October, 2017
Where:
The Labia, Cape Town, 021 424 5927
The Bioscope, Johannesburg, 011 039 7306
WS
