At 11:30 this morning I went to the cinema. Despite living in a city, today is a weekday and I did not think many -if any- people would be there. I was wrong. The theater was not full, but there were far fewer empty seats than I had expected. The film I saw was not a blockbuster with a large advertising budget. Granted, this was the premier, but still: a busy movie on a Friday morning?
The film was I Am Not Your Negro. It is a cinematic version of the thirty pages of notes that James Baldwin left the world. They were the beginning of a book he was preparing before he died in 1987. Provisionally titled Remember This House, Baldwin intended it to be a description of the relationships he had had with Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. The testimony of any person who knew one of these men is special, but Baldwin’s intimacy with all of them makes his voice remarkable. This is truer still because the eloquence and knowledge Baldwin brought to the story is noteworthy. Indeed, we are talking about one of the most important voices of twentieth-century USA.
Raoul Peck, the film’s director, used a combination of footage of Baldwin speaking and voiceover of the author's words being read. He combined this with a diverse mixture of moving and still images from the 1960s and others from the present day. The result is obvious: Baldwin’s words are transformed into a commentary on both his time and ours.
The poignancy of a 1980s commentary on a 1960s subject being not only relevant in 2017, but frighteningly prescient is overwhelming. The result is a film worth seeing. Our times deserve more commentary like this.
The film was I Am Not Your Negro. It is a cinematic version of the thirty pages of notes that James Baldwin left the world. They were the beginning of a book he was preparing before he died in 1987. Provisionally titled Remember This House, Baldwin intended it to be a description of the relationships he had had with Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. The testimony of any person who knew one of these men is special, but Baldwin’s intimacy with all of them makes his voice remarkable. This is truer still because the eloquence and knowledge Baldwin brought to the story is noteworthy. Indeed, we are talking about one of the most important voices of twentieth-century USA.
Raoul Peck, the film’s director, used a combination of footage of Baldwin speaking and voiceover of the author's words being read. He combined this with a diverse mixture of moving and still images from the 1960s and others from the present day. The result is obvious: Baldwin’s words are transformed into a commentary on both his time and ours.
The poignancy of a 1980s commentary on a 1960s subject being not only relevant in 2017, but frighteningly prescient is overwhelming. The result is a film worth seeing. Our times deserve more commentary like this.
