I Am Not Your Negro

(Raoul Peck, US 2016, 93 min., DCP)

James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript for Remember This House provides the backbone for this documentary. The book was intended to be a personal memoir of Baldwin’s recollections of civil rights leaders Medger Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Under the guidance of documentarian Raoul Peck, it goes beyond that, offering a formalist examination of racism in the United States. Peck interweaves image and audio, sometimes at odds, composing five chapters that look at school integration, Hollywood’s approaches to depiction, socially constructed dividing lines, and exploitation. A powerful and moving document of one of the country’s greatest thinkers, the film has received many awards around the world. Samuel L. Jackson provides the voice of Baldwin through the film as he reads from the manuscript.