“White people are astounded by Birmingham. Black people aren’t. White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is on Mars. They don’t want to believe…that what is happening in Birmingham is happening all over the country.” – James Baldwin
With I Am Not Your Negro, an examination of James Baldwin’s writing on his murdered friends, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, Remember This House, which he began in 1979 and never completed, filmmaker Raoul Peck has made the most important film to watch this year. Not only is the film well done and beautifully layered with equal parts history, observations, archival footage, old Hollywood films and today's news, which is sometimes hard to distinguish from 60 years ago, but the visual poetry of the city street shots, the quiet lights and rain, are the perfect companion to the reflective nature of Baldwin’s writing. It is a film, which is sadly and infuriatingly timely for what's happening in the country now (and always has been but has come to the surface once more in an ugly way).
“When… any white man in the world says, ‘give me liberty or give me death,’ the entire white world applauds, but when the black man says exactly the same thing—word for word-- he is judged a criminal and treated like one...”
The quotes from Baldwin throughout the film could have been written yesterday. They applied years ago and still apply now. Peck’s film speaks not only to the racial and social divides that have always plagued this country but also the moral, ethical and spiritual emptiness of our culture as a whole, capturing Baldwin’s honest, poignant observations brilliantly. It is cinema as much as documentary which is always film at it’s best, and should be required watching for everyone.
What will be the film’s biggest challenge as always is to get the people who need to see it, hear it and understand it, to actually watch it. While much has changed on the surface of our country, there is still so much that remains the same and needs to be done. A side note, after you watch this brilliant documentary, watch the post-election episode of Black’ish, written and directed by the shows creator Kenya Barris. There is hope yet. The trailer for I Am Not Your Negro below. The film opens this Friday February 3rd.