In 1979, shortly before he died, James Baldwin wrote an unfinished work in which he reflected on his life as a homosexual writer in the context of the black Civil Rights Movement. This 30-page work called “Remember This House,” which was never published, is the basis of I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO. It begins with Baldwin’s memories of school and a white teacher who had a great impact on him, then it moves on to his return from Europe and his life in the 1960s with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King.
To accompany the text, Raoul Peck created a brilliant collage of archival photos combined with film and news clips. Baldwin’s public appearances on a TV show, at the Cambridge University Debate 1965, and at a lecture after the murder of M. L. King in 1969 (documented in BALDWIN’S NIGGER by Horace Ové) are captivating and show his undogmatic way of thinking and quick-witted humor.
In his last book “The Devil Finds Work” (1976), Baldwin offers an in-depth analysis of how black Americans are portrayed in Hollywood films. Peck picks up this theme in aptly chosen scenes from movies and commercials, thus showing how politics and media history are intertwined. He also draws parallels with the ongoing presence of white police violence in several precisely placed references to Rodney King and the most recent deaths and riots – for example, in Ferguson. The only actual present-day shots are of Times Square, which Peck presents as the beguiling essence of Western (white) consumer society.
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Raoul Peck geb. 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, aufgewachsen in Zaire und in den USA. Peck studierte in Frankreich, in den USA, Ökonomie an der Humboldt Universität und schloss 1988 ein Filmstudium an der DFFB in Berlin ab. Mit seinem Spielfilm L’HOMME SUR LES QUAIS präsentierte er 1993 den ersten Beitrag aus der Karibik im Wettbewerb von Cannes. 1996 und 1997 war er Kulturminister in Haiti. Seit 2010 ist er Präsident der staatlichen Filmschule LA FÉMIS in Paris. Filme u.a. LUMUMBA-DEATH OF A PROPHET (1991, Dokumentarfilm), HAITI-LE SILENCE DES CHIENS (1994), LUMUMBA (2000, Spielfilm), PROFIT AND NOTHING BUT! (2001, Essayfilm), SOMETIMES IN APRIL (2005), MOLOCH TROPICAL (2009), FATAL ASSISTANCE (2012), MEURTRE À PACOT (2014), LE JEUNE KARL MARX (2017).
