I Am Not Your Negro
At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement's influence is showing in popular culture, such as hit horror film Get Out, Rhys Williams looks at the urgent relevance of black civil rights campaigner James Baldwin's words today, as presented in Raoul Peck's documentary, I Am Not Your Negro.
Raoul Peck’s new documentary film, I Am Not Your Negro, sets the words of author and civil rights activist James Baldwin’s unfinished book, Remember This House, against archive footage of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Sprawling and epic in scope — setting in its sights the whole of the black experience in America, from slavery to the Black Lives Matter movement — it is poetic and almost romantic, yet very angry. It arrives at a time when audiences are being enthused by the anti-racism of Get Out, a more mainstream and comic movie, but just as sharp.