I Am Not Your Negro

Documentary | 2016 | PG-13. 1hr 35min
CAST: Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin, Dick Cavett DIRECTOR: Raoul Peck JUNETEENTH | 6/19/23

A special Juneteenth presentation

In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends-Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only thirty completed pages of his manuscript. Now, in his incendiary new documentary, master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material.

Movie

Reviews

An incisive, biting cultural analysis, a psychological examination of a nation - including its culture and institutions - in denial of its own social constructs of race and racism, created to divide us.

Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

While Peck's work brims over with anger and horror, it is also a work of sweeping poetry. This story still isn't pretty, but it's delivered in a captivating and gorgeous manner.

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap

It's tough to hear Baldwin's words today and realize how many of the same battles are still being fought, but the effect isn't depressing but is instead galvanizing.

Travis Hopson, Punch Drunk Critics