I Am Not Your Negro (Rauol Peck, 2016)

Reviewed by Natalia de Oliveira Segreto. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival of 2017.

James Baldwin vision of the world and own sense of identity is what brings us to be involved in I Am Not Your Negro. Together with some films including Hidden Figures, Moonlight, Lion, Fences and others, these features all bring up to the 89th Academy Awards narratives that touch upon racism and minorities issues.

A while before leaving us, James Baldwin started writing Remember This House, a book that would count on the collection of his personal memories, leaving only 30 pages behind. This very original and individual documentary counts on these manuscripts of James Baldwin from 1979 describing a little of what the leaders of the african american civil rights Malcolm X, Marthin Luther King and Medgar Evers went through while trying to make people understand the unfairness of their conditions. Raoul Peck counts on a very intelligent choice of Samuel L. Jackson bringing to life these manuscripts, and other texts adding up to the narrative a very poetic utterance intertwined with video footage of James Baldwin himself and other activists. The film also brings up actual footage and touches upon what our world came up to be like today. Together with many achieve footage of James Baldwin, Malcolm, Marthin and Medgar we can really get a sense of what their personality is like and even understand what brings them to be differed within their common seek. But it is James Baldwin’s voice that stands out with his unclouded vision upon society itself that moves the feature documentary to ask us very serious question.

I believe James Baldwin would be very proud of what his voice came out to be shown as in this documentary. His theses about racism and his nonconformity are clearly set throughout the film that counts with opening credits that already set apart black from white. It is odd to leave the theater with a very clear idea in the head of the miscarriage of humanity and a certain bitter feeling on the chest after seeing what has being told 40 years ago still happening nowadays.