“I Am Not Your Negro” (2016), directed by Raoul Peck

One of the best and most relevant features of the year, I’m not your nigger was voted Best Documentary-Non-Fiction by the LA Film Critics Association (of which I have been a member for forty years).

When director Raoul Peck first met Gloria Karefa-Smart, James Baldwin’s sister and executor of his will, the first item she gave him was a letter from her brother to his literary agent Jay Acton, informing him brought about his decision to write as his next book (and possibly his last): “Remember This House.”

For the next ten years, Peck owned the rights to Baldwin’s entire oeuvre. He knew he wanted to bring Baldwin to the screen, even if it would be a painful and complex undertaking.

Initially, he planned to create, just like his project Lumumbaa narrative film and a documentary. After several failed attempts in Hollywood to get the project into development, he decided to focus on producing the documentary first. But he wasn’t sure how to approach this.

One day Gloria gave him a stack of neatly (and partly crossed out) typewritten pages and a letter. “You know what to do with this,” she said. That was it, the film had to be: assume the book existed. It was buried everywhere in Baldwin’s oeuvre and public presentations. Our job was to find it and recreate it from all the pieces.

Peck’s intention with I’m not your nigger is to guide viewers through the complex political path of the ‘memorable’ lives of Malcom, Medgar and Martin, using only Baldwin’s own words and relying heavily on the text of Remember this house.

I’m not your nigger bears some resemblance to Celluloid case And About violence in collecting still and moving images from various sources to weave an immersive audiovisual tapestry. There are images of the young black Dorothy Counts alone in confronting a large, aggressive white gang on her way to her first day of school, and Peck’s remarkable analysis of Guess who’s coming for dinner? and the role of Sidney Poitier in Hollywood cinema.

Why James Baldwin?

James Baldwin (1924-1987) was one of the greatest American writers of the second half of the twentieth century. He grew up in Harlem and at the age of 24, frustrated by the state of race relations in America and the regular incidents of harassment, left the US for France, where he lived most of his life.

A prolific writer and brilliant social critic, he foreshadowed the destructive trends taking place in the Western world today, while always maintaining a sense of humanistic hope and dignity. He explored the tangible but unspoken complexity of racial, sexual and class differences in Western societies and the inevitable, if unmentionable, tensions with personal identity, assumptions, insecurities, desire and quests. He had an unparalleled understanding of politics and history, and especially of the human condition.

Why now?

Today, James Baldwin’s words still carry the same violent truth. There will hardly ever be anything as precise, as just, as subtle and as percussive as the writing of this man, who understood everything: politics, history and, above all, the human factor.

Baldwin outlived the magicians, the gurus and the smooth talkers of his day, black or white. His thoughts are as effective today as they were when they were first expressed. His analysis, his judgment, and his statements are even more profound today than when they were originally written.

In the current context of extreme violence in America, especially against blacks, I’m not your nigger tries to analyze and understand the deeper structural explanation, or as Peck puts it: “Despite the progress, Martin seems quite lonely on the mountaintop.”

The cycles of violence and confusion condemned by Baldwin have taken over – trivialized and distorted by the influence of the press, television, Hollywood and angry party politics.

How can we break these cycles if we never touch the real problems themselves? How do we address America’s fundamental problems? Never before has Baldwin’s voice been so necessary, so powerful, so radical, so visionary.

Dramatic construction

I’m not your nigger resumes James Baldwin’s quest, through which Peck also reappropriates his own story. It is James Baldwin’s words that viewers hear, but it is Peck’s own experience, his emotional syntax, that determines the structure, rhythm and turning points of the film.

By documenting these three “memorable” lives (Evers, King, Malcolm), Peck also dissects Obama’s America and revisits the central argument of the “Negro problem in America.” Unfortunately, Obama has not erased the dominant storyline. The brief euphoria surrounding Obama’s rise has not healed all the wounds of a country built on blood.

Against Obama’s undeniable presence, Peck juxtaposes the no less essential reality of decades of myths and one-sided stories. For Peck, “Despite any real or perceived ‘progress,’ we cannot avoid questioning the veracity of the new symbols of change.”

Subjective approach

Inspired by filmmakers like Chris Marker, Alexander Kluge and even Godard, Peck returns to his roots as a filmmaker (namely Lumumba, the death of a prophet). For him, it was a time when innocence was allowed to take risks, when political and aesthetic experimentation knew few boundaries, when there was no model, no margin, no goal and no dogma that could not be shattered. His goal was to “question everything again and reclaim my freedom and my subjectivity.”

The result is a rare experiment with words, form, images, music, humor, poetry and drama that captures the harsh reality of violence, rape, racism, exploitation, abuse, carnage and injustice.

Voice of Baldwin, narrated by Jackson

To say these words, Peck needed a ‘personality’, a familiar voice that would not distract from the essence. That’s why he chose Samuel L. Jackson, who embraced the film and his approach.

Images

Especially visually and musically, I’m not your nigger uses archival images of private and public photos; film fragments, Hollywood classics, documentaries, film and TV interviews, popular TV shows, TV debates, public debates and contemporary images. It is a kaleidoscope with a hectic and poetic assemblage (a medley), all in Baldwin’s own peculiar style.

The images accentuate the words and the music and vice versa. By re-examining traditional ‘black’ iconography, with its clichés, the unspoken, the fundamental errors of interpretation and even the paternalistic prudishness, I’m not your nigger redefines their meaning and impact.

Peck summarized his experience: “A project like this involves a lot of patience, time and risk. And in the early stages, it’s almost impossible to convince anyone of the film. Then, after a lot of research, writing and editing, there comes a time when you especially need trust.”

It was ITVS and Independent Lens executive producer Lois Vossen who came at the right time, with courage, conviction and funding.