I Am Not Your Negro

I've been on a roll lately with my movie choices. I've seen one delight after another and I get to add this movie to the list.

I Am Not Your Negro is a documentary based upon the writings of James Baldwin in which the essence is Black-White race relations in the U.S. James was an eloquent writer and speaker so I may be doing him a disservice by summarizing the documentary as such. He'd probably say it was a lot more than that--and it was. In it we got an ode to Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. These three iconic figures of the Civil Rights era were all killed within five years of each other and none lived to the age of 40.

There was a lot of riveting and provocative imagery in this documentary and it certainly will not appeal to a lot of people. There are some ugly truths about the American past that we all want to move on from but we'd do well not to forget.

I loved the film. If for no other reason than being treated to seeing and hearing James Baldwin speak. He was a brilliant and eloquent speaker and I had no clue. One thing mentioned was how Malcolm X, MLK and James Baldwin all had different view points and different approaches to the problems of Black people in America. They all spoke a truth as they had different backgrounds and different outlooks. But what is undeniable is that they all had the uplifting of their people in mind and all three personalities were invaluable to the African American cause.

This is a documentary that is going to disturb you and wake you up out of your reverie. The film is replete with historical footage and photos as well as recent footage--there are clips as recent as present day Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump--so you can't just relegate the picture to "old news" or "stuff from the past". It is relevant and as James Baldwin alluded to: it is a problem that has to be fixed because the survival of the country depends upon it.

PROGRESSIVE CINEMA - One of the most artistic and daring political statements at this years Toronto International Film Festival, was the world premiere of Haitian-born Raoul Peck's I Am Not Your Negro, based on James Baldwin's unfinished book Remember This House. Not surprisingly the film won the People's Choice Documentary Award for its "radical narration about race in America today." Peck is from Haiti and has created one of the most progressive filmographies in cinema history. He actually received privileged access to the Baldwin archives because the family knew of his outstanding works on the Conga leader, Patrice Lumumba, specifically the 1990 political thriller Lumumba: Death of a Prophet and the 2000 award winning drama on the same subject, Lumumba. They trusted in his ability to accurately represent Baldwin's life and writings, and so he took 10 years to bring this masterpiece to the screen, after being rejected by every American studio he approached. And public agencies said "this is public money so you have to present both sides!" Thus, his ability to produce this film through his own successful company and a supportive French TV station ARTE, allowed him to make a film exactly like he wanted, with no censorship, and no one telling him to rush the film or mellow the message.

Peck "didn't want to use the traditional civil rights archives." He chose to avoid the talking heads format and picked Samuel L. Jackson to embody the spirit of Baldwin in the potent narration. The film's powerful structure utilizing rare videos and photos and personal writings of Baldwin, and at the same time aligning them with contemporary issues of police brutality and race relations, creates a mesmerizing awareness of the continuity in the struggle for civil rights.

Baldwin made a deep impact on the young impressionable Haitian filmmaker. Peck remembers back in the 60s when mostly white Americans were honored in pictures on walls, and that "it was Baldwin who first helped me see through this myth of American heroes." He felt that Baldwin had been forgotten or overlooked, while James Meredith, Medgar Evers, the Black Panthers, Huey Newton, Malcolm X and other Black leaders were either killed off, imprisoned, exiled or bought out. There were rare exceptions on commercial TV, once where Baldwin talked on the Dick Cavett Show for an hour uncensored.

Baldwin, although a literary giant and a close friend to many leading activists, rarely appeared at events and mass rallies, and declined membership in parties or groups such as the NAACP, Panthers, SNCC, etc. And although he was homosexual, rarely focused on the issue of gay rights, which would have been even more isolating in those decades. Rightfully, this film brings to life Baldwin's poetry and passion for justice, and regains his importance in the field where art intersects activism.

While addressing the enthusiastic audience in the Q&A, director Peck mentioned, "I hope this film will help rephrase what is called the race conversation, which deep down is a class conversation." Although class wasn't developed as much as race in this film, not coincidentally, Peck is now in post-production on a drama about young Karl Marx(!) – a major historical figure who has rarely if never been a subject in America cinema. And all of Peck's previous films are imbued with a deep sense of awareness in the class struggle.

The director was a special guest at a TIFF Talk entitled Race and History where he covered many of the points mentioned here about taking control of your own artistic project. He defended the idea that an artist has a point of view and shouldn't be forced to compromise his political message, whether it's acceptable or not. Near the end of the conversation I was able to ask him a question about how difficult it is to market films on race and class. He responded by saying "I come from a generation that was more political and where the film content was more important. . . I tried to keep the content but provide a great movie. . .All my films are political but I make sure I tell a story, that it's art and poetry and that the audience will enjoy it." He confesses that he's privileged having his own company and that his films don't always have to make money. "It's about financing your movie, not making a profit. . .It's difficult to have those two sides in your head, because you know that having to make a profit means you often have to compromise. . .Once I have people trust me with their money, I am obliged to give them a great film -- I'm not obliged to give them profit." And he gave them a great film! I Am Not Your Negro was recently purchased by Magnolia Pictures for North American distribution, where they praised Peck for crafting a "profound and indelible statement that couldn't be more timely or powerful."

This film should be required for every American. It is one of the most important films of our time. It is lyrical, profound, historic and of this moment. And, at the same time it is profoundly intimate. James Baldwin is right here with us, front and center, looking right at us, talking with us, imploring us to consider the urgent questions he raised 50 years ago that are as urgent today. Thank you Raoul Peck. This is a masterpiece. It is as poetic as it is a demand for white people to come to terms with how they have constructed blackness and what, indeed, this means about whiteness. Peck includes one of Baldwin's most famous statements on this in the film: "What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a n*#!er in the first place. Because I'm not a n*#!er. I'm a man, but if you think I'm a n*#!er, it means you need it. . . . If I'm not a n*#!er here and you invented him — you, the white people, invented him — then you've got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it's able to ask that question." This is it. Our future depends on it. Baldwin cannot say it more clearly.

There are so many ways to feel and experience and comment on this film.

AS A WRITER: For lovers of language, phrasing, and meaning, hearing James Baldwin's writings and seeing him speak is enough to spark the highest praise alone. His capacity for observational conclusion and his use of language to transmit these conclusions is extraordinary. In this, he is one of the finest chroniclers of the American condition, not just one of the finest African American chroniclers. If you don't believe that going into this movie, you will when you come out of it. Spending close to two hours listening to the man's work is an utterly intoxicating experience. In this regard the film is extraordinary.

AS A FILM LOVER: We know that James Baldwin was a cinephile and one of the great film critics in American history. He wrote extensively about cinema and a large part of this film consists of clips from Hollywood's rough history of reducing or falsifying the black American experience, often with Baldwin's own criticisms laid on top of them, weighing the clips down, eviscerating them. There are hard juxtapositions here as well, such as the innocence of Doris Day pressed up against the reality of lynched black men and women swaying in trees. By contextualizing these images in new and fresh ways the film is able to paint an impressionistic portrait of American denial. And despite a small handful of shots that don't entirely synergistically ring with the Baldwin text (I'm thinking of a few clips – by no means all - that the filmmaker himself shot), there are enough times when the words being spoken and the images being shown are so surprising and spot on as to be true, high, art. In this regard, the film is extraordinary.

AS A HUMAN BEING: The greatest moral failing of this nation is not its imperialism, not its militarism, not its materialism or escapism or consumerism, – though the film makes a strong case that all these things are tangled together – America's greatest moral failing is its racism. And the scalpel procession with which this movie uses Baldwin's words and character to autopsy this vast cultural sin is inspiring. Baldwin himself was never a racist, though God knows, I wouldn't blame him if he had been. Baldwin was never a classist or a nationalist or a demagogue of any sort. Baldwin was a man. He demanded that he be perceived as a man and that black America be perceived as people, with all the dignity and rights that affords. He looked America in the eye and asked a simple question, why do you NEED to dehumanize me? And he followed the question up with a statement, as long as you dehumanize me, America can never succeed. It was not a threat. It was another of his observational truths, the idea that our racism undoes us, keeps us from being great. In the way "I'm Not Your Negro" illuminates Baldwin's call for a higher humanist agenda, the film is extraordinary.

AS AN ACTIVIST: The film implies that the most horrifying thing you can do to a movement is to kill its leaders. Not just because you deny dignity and rights to the people who look to those leaders for hope, but you also impact the movement for generations. The natural order of generational transition, that a great leader will grow old, evolve, change, and teach the next generation how to lead, is violently interrupted. What we are left with is the idea that there is nothing Malcolm X or Martin Luther King could have done to keep from being killed except to be silent – not an option for either, nor for Baldwin. X was killed even as he was becoming less militant, less radical, reversing against the idea of "the white devil". This "evolution" did not save him. King was killed even as he was becoming more radicalized, more desperate, slowly walking back the rule of love for the rule of forced respect. This "evolution" did not save him. There was nothing the White America that killed them wanted from them but silence in the face of dehumanization. And in its subtle, artistic, nuanced way, this film is about all of that. But it also ties itself to the moment. Images of Ferguson, photographs of unarmed black children left dead in the streets by police, video of Rodney King being brutalized beyond any justification, all of it means that Baldwin's words ring timeless, his call to action not remotely diffused by our distance from him and his time. In this regard, the film is extraordinary.

AS A LOVER OF PEOPLE: Baldwin is by no means a traditionally handsome man, but he is a striking one. His charisma is nuclear and his face is always animated. When he speaks, the depth and warmth of the content play across his features. His eyebrows lift all the way to the middle of his forehead when he pauses to gather his considerable intellect for attack. His eyes turn down and to the right when he knows he's eviscerating an illegitimate institution. He punctuates an observation with a smile so genuine and wide that it emits its own light. To watch him command a talk show or a lecture is cinema enough. In that it gives us the gift of watching Baldwin speak – among so many other things - the film is extraordinary.

I guess I have some small aesthetic qualms with the way the film is put together, but to what end? These are my own little opinions about the tiniest minutia of filmmaking. Personal hang- ups on a certain cut here or there, useless criticisms on a work that succeeds so profoundly in all the most valuable and important ways.

The film is extraordinary, important, and genuine in any and every way that matters, and that's all there is to it.

I do not live in the US but I am fascinated by it. I live in the Netherlands where a dutch musician recommended it through social media. Reading James Baldwin's books was already on my to do list and this movie has enticed me even more to dive further in the head of this mastermind. His analysis of the American life is layered and complex but ultimatly comes down to one thing: Are you willing to look at who you really are and are you willing to change to make your society a better place. This movie embodies a universal timeless truth through the mind and creativity of a skillfull genius. A gift to anyone who is open to learn.