I Am Not Your Negro

A documentary drawn from a book James Baldwin never finished. In 1979 Baldwin wrote to his publisher describing a new book: Remember This House. It would be about three people he knew, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. All three were assassinated, none reached forty. Baldwin wrote thirty pages and stopped. The documentary uses those thirty pages and other texts of his. There is no narrator; every sentence heard is Baldwin's own writing, read by Samuel L. Jackson. On the image side there are two layers: archive footage of the period and America today. The film sets them side by side and offers no commentary between; a street scene from the 1960s is followed by recent footage. Baldwin's television appearances are also used, and those are the film's strongest passages. Raoul Peck directed and worked with Baldwin's family for a long time to reach the project. It was Oscar-nominated for documentary. One of the strongest recent examples for anyone who likes documentary and is curious about the history of race in America. For a viewer expecting a straight biography, the film does not tell Baldwin's life; it transmits his thinking.