I Am Not Your Negro Dir: Raoul Peck

 

The New Zealand International Film Festival opens in Auckland today. Films serve a myriad of purposes…to entertain, to thrill, to inform and to stimulate thoughtful discussion. Raoul Peck’s documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, based on the writings of James Baldwin, is a film that will quite possibly change your life.

Peck, a former Minister Of Culture for Haiti, has taken an unfinished manuscript written by American novelist, playwright and social critic James Baldwin during the 1970s and fashioned a film that sheds new light on the issue of race relations that make it as relevant today as Baldwin’s thoughts and words were forty years ago.

Samuel L Jackson narrates the film, reading Baldwin’s words as he details what it was like to grow up as a black man in America during the 20^th century…Baldwin was born in 1924 and died in 1987.

Baldwin’s deeply personal observations, illustrated with film clips from the 20s and 30s through to clips of the man himself stating his case so powerfully and eloquently during the 50s, 60s and 70s, will enlighten anyone who chooses to listen to them, no matter what their race.

Balwin digs deep into his personal relationship with three black men who were assassinated during the 1960s…Medgar Evers, Malcom X and Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Baldwin was close to all three and their lives and deaths are brought into sharp relief reflecting the degree of hate and violence that was rife during that turbulent decade.

For those who may think that things are different now, Peck deftly weaves contemporary footage of Black Lives Matter protests, of racially motivated police killings and of white power groups.

Baldwin writes, “The story of the Negro in America is the story of America and it is not a pretty story.

For us who live thousands of miles away from the US, the importance of this film looms just as large. As Baldwin also writes, “White is a metaphor for power and that is a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank”.

In other words, if you’re not part of the 1%, you may very well find yourself in the same situation that the young James Baldwin did growing up in New York City back in the 1930s…marginalized, criminalized, ostracized and beaten down.

It’s a sobering, thought-provoking film that needs to be seen. Make sure you do.

Marty Duda