I Am Not Your Negro is a documentary film directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House. Along Baldwin’s memories of his companions, civil rights activists Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, the film traces the history of racism against Black people and their resistance from the last century to today in the United States.
Impressively, Peck manages to weave Baldwin’s stirring words about culture, politics, and racism with historical footage and contextualize them along with current scenes of Black resistance, such as in Ferguson. Overall, the film is a brilliant visual essay that provides deep insights into race relations and makes racism and resistance history comprehensible then and now.
I Am Not Your Negro | Raoul Peck | USA | 2017 | Documentary | English | 95 min.