I Am Not Your Negro
Year: 2016Certificate: 12
- Director:
- Raoul Peck
- Cast:
- Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte
- Running Time:
- 92 mins
- Language:
- English
- English Subtitles:
- Na
- Country of Origin:
- France, USA
- Genre(s):
- Documentary, Film
- Formats:
Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and with unprecedented access to James Baldwin’s original work, award-winning filmmaker Raoul Peck (Murder in Pacot, Moloch Tropical, Sometimes in April, Lumumba), has completed the cinematic version of the book Baldwin never wrote - a radical narration about race in America that tracks the lives and assassinations of Baldwin’s friends, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Whilst it is partly anchored in the struggle for equality in the 50s and 60s, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is about what it means to be black in America today.
By confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassinations of these three men we uncover a larger narrative of America’s historical and current denial and irrational relationship with race. This ‘history of violence’ is also told through the long simplified narrative that Hollywood recounts as a story between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ or ‘right and wrong’, reflects our current racial precariousness. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is also the autopsy of the American racial imagery and iconography.