James Baldwin’s America Raoul Peck's film is a homage to the prolific African American author and poet

Written by Whitney Marin

James Baldwin is a great American author that has touched the lives of many men and women across the world, having written a number of novels, essays, poems and plays that have penetrated the American consciousness and memorialized what it means to be black in America. For filmmaker Raoul Peck, Baldwin’s work has never been far from his side.

The Haitian-born auteur fled Haiti with his father as a young boy to the Republic of Congo and eventually moved to Brooklyn, New York. At age 17, Peck read one of Baldwin’s works and he said that even all these years later, Baldwin has never left him. Peck has had an illustrious career, with two of his films having shown at the Cannes Film Festival. He is the former Minister of Culture of Haiti and the recipient of the Human Rights Watch’s Irene Diamond Award for his humanitarian efforts. Peck is also the Chairman of the Board of the French film school, La Fémis.

I Am Not Your Negro, which was shown as a selection of DOC NYC’s 2016 Short List program, has the full support of the Baldwin Estate, Peck having worked closely with Baldwin’s sister, Gloria Smart. The film takes a poetic approach, using 30 pages of an unfinished manuscript, as well as other Baldwin texts. The prolific Samuel L. Jackson narrates as the film engages with archival footage and dreamy present-day shots to paint a picture of America through Baldwin’s eyes. After the murders of three of his friends: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, Baldwin moves to Paris and reconciles with the state of black lives and the plight of humanity in light of the civil rights movement. Neither Evers, King nor Malcolm X lived to be 40 years old.

“I had to find how do I build something around those words,” said Peck. “Make something impactful that will effect us when we read it without changing their context, without changing their poetry, without changing their sincerity, etc.” It took the filmmaker 4 years upon securing the rights to find an entry to the work. Apparently, he achieved his vision. A diverse audience praised the film with a standing ovation at the SVA Theater on Saturday, November 12th.

“It’s about these words and it’s about the modesty that we should have in front of those words. And how will you create that character who is James Baldwin,” he said.  “You know when it’s there and you know when it’s not there.”

With a rare level of access to Baldwin, Peck felt a great responsibility to appropriately represent the literary figure. “My hope is to send people back to Baldwin. Everything is there. I hope that these books will do the same [for them] as they did for me,” he said. “They helped create who I am today.”

I Am Not Your Negro will air on PBS in 2017 after a wider theatrical run and Peck has plans to partner with colleges and universities.

Whitney Marin is a freelancer writer and contributor to the DOC NYC blog.