I Am Not Your Negro

Description

Baldwin's last, unrealized project comes to life, using his original words to create a radical, powerful and poetic work on race in the United States To compose his stunning documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined James Baldwin's published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Weaving these texts together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote. In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck's film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin's private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.

James Baldwin (Author) Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, play-wright, poet, social critic, and the author of more than twenty books. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay col-lection The Fire Next Time was a bestseller that made him an influential figure in the civil rights movement. Baldwin spent many years in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in 1987. Raoul Peck (Author) Raoul Peck is a filmmaker acclaimed for his historical, political, and artistic work. Born in Haiti, he grew up in Congo, France, Germany, and the United States. He is currently chairman of the French national film school, La Femis.

Lets James Baldwin's searing work soar . . . you will be astounded by the brilliance of his polemic -- Geoffrey Macnab * Independent * A striking work of storytelling . . . One of the best movies about the civil rights era ever made . . . This might be the only movie about race relations that adequately explains with sympathy the root causes * Guardian * Thrilling. . . . A portrait of one man's confrontation with a country that, murder by murder, as he once put it, devastated my universe * New York Times * Baldwin's voice speaks even more powerfully today . . . the prose-poet of our injustice and inhumanity . . . The times have caught up with his scalding eloquence * Variety * I Am Not Your Negro turns James Baldwin into a prophet * Rolling Stone *