We last wrote about Raoul Peck‘s James Baldwin film a few weeks ago, and around that time not too much was known about the movie. We knew that Peck had spent six years developing a documentary on Baldwin (he also received the blessing of the Baldwin estate to do so), and that the premise was based on an unfinished book he wrote about assassinated civil rights heroes Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. But aside from that there was no title or tentative release date.
Now that’s changed. According to Shadow & Act Peck’s documentary is called I Am Not Your Negro, and will toy with the idea that Baldwin actually wrote his incomplete novel on some of black America’s most important civil rights leaders.
“The starting point of the film is to say — yes, he wrote it,” Peck said. “He just didn’t bind it together, but if you go through his work, the film is there.”
Having Baldwin’s estate’s blessing was integral to making the movie. Because of that Peck gained access to all of Baldwin’s writings, as well as the 30 pages of notes centered on this ambitious book that never saw the light of day. Those notes also included letters between the writer and his agent, where the former knew that the book would be a challenge and probably wouldn’t sell, but still wanted to write it anyway.
A summary for I Am Not Your Negro from the New York Film Festival (which happens in October and will be premiering the film on October 1 and 2) offers even more details about the forthcoming movie.
“Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck has taken the 30 completed pages of James Baldwin’s final, unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, in which the author went about the painful task of remembering his three fallen friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, and crafted an elegantly precise and bracing film essay. Peck’s film, about the unholy agglomeration of myths, institutionalized practices both legal and illegal, and displaced white terror that have long perpetuated the tragic state of race in America, is anchored by the presence of Baldwin himself in images and words, read beautifully by Samuel L. Jackson in hushed, burning tones.”
Wow. So not only will this be the first definitive James Baldwin documentary, but it’ll also include actor Samuel L. Jackson narrating viewers along? Incredible.
When asked why Peck wanted to do a film on Baldwin, he responded: “Because Baldwin is my life…I started reading Baldwin when I was 14 or 15, and I realized as an adult a lot of the things I was saying came from him.”
There are no trailers or clips out yet but hopefully as the film gets closer to its premiere date at the NYFF in October, we’ll get some stuff.
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