About Giles Duley’s interactive exhibition for refugees

 Must see in London in October.

Link: http://trumanbrewery.com/cgi-bin/exhibitions.pl

Article published in the British Journal of Photography today:

Published on 25 September 2017

Helping refugees starts in London with Giles Duley’s interactive exhibition

Written by Alex Jackson

Murad, 5 years old, from Idlib – Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. Feb. 2016. © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Hosted at The Old Truman Brewery, Giles Duley's exhibition, I Can Only Tell You What I See, featuring images from his photobook of the same name, promises collaborative conversations to bring people together on the issue of refugees.

“They gave me the greatest brief a photographer can be given: ‘Follow your heart’,” says Giles Duley of the moment the UNHCR asked him to work with them on documenting the refugee crisis in Europe in 2015, with many of the photographs featuring in upcoming exhibition, I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See. “That was it really, I was free to do as I saw fit.

“I started by documenting the journey, the journey from Greece and the boat landing there, up through the Balkans and on towards Germany and Berlin,” he continues. “But that was only really one part of the story. The real crisis is happening in the Middle East in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Jordan. So most of the project then was concentrated in those countries.”

Duley travelled throughout the region for eight months, returning time and again to refugee camps and conflict zones in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. He jokes that he didn’t have a day off for over half a year – but adds that he needed to take time to get to know the people he was photographing.

Shamah Darweesh, over 90 years old, from Homs – Al-Mafraq, Jordan. March 2016 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Hussein, 8 years old, from AL bab near Aleppo – Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. February 2016 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Ibrahim, 25 years old from Idlib – Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. February 2016 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

“You need to spend time with people, you need to respect these people, you have to get to know them, becoming friends before you start talking about making photographs,” he says. “Too many people turn up and start taking photographs immediately, and you’ve created a barrier. I’m a photographer whose camera spends more time in the bag than it does out of it. I can spend days and even weeks with people before I even bring out my camera.”

Yet the journey to take these photographs has not always been easy. In 2011 Duley sustained massive injuries after stepping on an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in Afghanistan, losing both legs and one arm. Continuing his work in photojournalism has been a mammoth task, especially given the fact he carries all his own equipment and works in sometime hostile environments. “I don’t think my photos are as much in focus anymore. Focus is overrated though,” he laughs.

“But photography is absolutely everything in my life and the only time I don’t feel like I have a disability, the only time I don’t feel in pain, is when I am taking a photograph,” he continues. “There are a lot of extra challenges which almost make it impossible, but I think the people I document look at me and hear my story and immediately we have something in common. They meet me and they know that it’s not easy for me to be there; they see me struggling, in pain, really making all the effort I can and challenged to take their photograph.”

Duley says his desire to see the refugees helped outweighs his personal difficulties, and that’s an ethos that carries through to the exhibition of his work coming up at The Old Truman Brewery. He’s chosen to make it an interactive display, hopeful that this will empower those who come to see it, inspiring them to reach out to those in need.

Ibraheem Alazam teaches math to his two sons – Ajloun, Jordan, April 2016 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Aya screams “Faster Donkey, faster!” while being pushed in her wheelchair by her brother Mohamad. Tripoli, Lebanon, 2016 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

On arriving in France, Sihan (Aya’s mother) said – ‘Aya struggles to sleep, but on the first night I was able to say to her, “It’s ok Aya, this is your home now”.’ Laval, France, June 2016 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

“The world at the moment can feel overwhelming. What I want to do is remind people that any small act can make a difference,” he says. “Don’t think globally – it’s ridiculous to think that you can end the war in Syria individually. Of course you can’t. But can you bake a cake and take it down to your local refugee centre? Of course you can.”

The show will also involve other artists, with Semaan Khawam will be the artist-in-residence, creating new work every night of the exhibition, and Rob Del Naja of the band Massive Attack has creating a soundscape to go with it. A supper gathering each evening will host up to 100 people, featuring cuisine from a Syrian couple who have set up a food outlet in London. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the exhibition will be paintings from children living in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, an addition which is made possible through the support of Sir Bobby Charlton’s charity, Find A Better Way. The pictures depict both the horrors the children have escaped, and the conditions they continue to endure.

“The exhibition just becomes this transition point – there will be new artwork created by the exhibition,” says Duley. “I think that’s exciting, it means it becomes alive. These often tragic stories will continue living in other forms, whether through painting or through music, so it’s about making the exhibition a place of life and a celebration of that life.”

He hopes that in doing so he can promote a positive, enriching experience, far away from the current political polemic surrounding migrants and migration. “I have a ‘Burning House’ theory,” he explains. “Even right now, we hear people have extreme views and there’s a lot of hatred in the world. But I believe most people, if they were going past a burning house and they saw someone in the window, would not ask ‘Is that person black or white, is that person straight or gay, is that person Muslim or Christian?’

“Their instinct would be to try and save that person. My job is to make sure that people see refugees in the same way they would see people in a burning building, because the situation is the same.”

I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See runs daily at The Old Truman Brewery, 4 October – 15 October. Giles Duley’s photobook of the same name is available now, published by Saqi books, with all profits being donated to the work of the UNHCR.

A train carrying Iraqi, Syrian and Afghan] refugees – FYR Macedonia. 28 November 2015 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

FYR Macedonian military use razor wire to construct a border fence – Idomeni, Greece. 29 November 2015 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Greek/FYROM border – Idomeni, Greece. 28 November 2015 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Thanasis, a local fisherman in Lesbos, rescues a boat that had become stranded. He had brought in boats everyday since June. November 2015 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Migrant workers from Pakistan warm their hands against the freezing temperatures – Idomeni, Greece. 30 30 November 2015 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Nighttime at the border crossing between Greece and FYR Macedonia – Idomeni, Greece. 30 November 2015 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Caught at the border, Sara, Mohammad and Asea from Homs, Syria try to keep warm in donated clothes as they prepare for another night without shelter – Idomeni, Greece. 03 December 2015 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

Malak’ Alazam with her three daughters. In 2014, whilst the family relaxed on their rooftop in Syria, a rocket hit their house. Two of her daughters were killed, another lost an eye and ‘Malak’ herself lost her leg – Ajloun, Jordan, April 2016 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

“I never wanted to go to Europe. I never wanted to be so far from Syria,” Ayman said before leaving Lebanon. “But if this gives my children a chance of a future, then I will go.” © Giles Duley/UNHCR

A boat carrying over 40 Afghans approaches Lesvos after crossing the Aegean from Turkey – Lesbos, Greece. 31 October 2015 © Giles Duley/UNHCR

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Link: http://trumanbrewery.com/cgi-bin/exhibitions.pl 

"How Music Powered Basquiat"

 The New York Times graces us with this articles about the importance of Britain in Jean-Michel Basquiat's life...

Must read!

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/arts/design/basquiat-barbican-london.html?smid=tw-nytimesarts&smtyp=cur&referer=https://t.co/4OzNXaP9or?amp=1

Bowie, Bach and Bebop: How Music Powered Basquiat

By EKOW ESHUN

SEPTEMBER 22, 2017

Jean-Michel Basquiat, pictured in 1981, sold his first painting that year to Debbie Harry of Blondie for $200.

LONDON — In 1979, at 19, the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat moved into an abandoned apartment on East 12th Street in Manhattan with his girlfriend at the time, Alexis Adler. The home, a sixth-floor walk-up, was run-down and sparsely furnished. Basquiat, broke and unable to afford canvases, painted with abandon on the walls and floor, even on Ms. Adler’s clothes.
The one item that remained undisturbed was Ms. Adler’s stereo, which had pride of place on a shelf scavenged from the street.

“The main thing for us was having big speakers and a blasting stereo. That was the only furniture I purchased myself,” said Ms. Adler, who still lives in the apartment. When Basquiat was around, she recalled, “music was playing all the time.”

On Thursday, the exhibition “Basquiat: Boom for Real” opened at the Barbican Center in London. The show focuses on the artist’s relationship to music, text, film and television. But it is jazz — the musical style that made up the bulk of Basquiat’s huge record collection — that looms largest as a source of personal inspiration to him and as a subject matter.

The first major retrospective of his work in Britain, it is a kind of homecoming for Basquiat’s art: In 1984, the first institutional show of his work opened at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, and then traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In a satisfying closing of a circle, a large drawing that Basquiat made in London for the institute’s exhibition, but that ended up not being shown there, will go on display at the Barbican.

Basquiat’s tastes were eclectic: Curtis Mayfield, Donna Summer, Bach, Beethoven, David Byrne,
Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Public Image Ltd.’s “Metal Box” album. “And he had his favorite tracks that he would just play and play,” Ms. Adler said. “Bowie’s ‘Low,’ definitely. And the second side of ‘Heroes.’ The influence of music was huge.”

Basquiat eventually amassed a collection of more than 3,000 albums. It spanned blues, classical, soul, disco and even zydeco, a type of popular music from southern Louisiana. He also made his own music: as the leader of Gray, an experimental art noise quartet; as the producer of the single “Beat Bop”; and as a D.J. at venues like the scene-setting Mudd Club in TriBeCa.

Basquiat made frequent references in his work to the musicians he most admired. He paid homage to Parker, whose nickname was Bird, in paintings such as “Bird on Money,” “Charles the First” and “CPRKR.” “Max Roach” was a nod to the vision and style of the jazz drummer of that name.
And in “King Zulu,” a masterly painting inspired by the history of early jazz that occupies a prominent place at the Barbican, Basquiat summoned the memory of the trumpeters Bix Beiderbecke, Bunk Johnson and Howard McGhee. In the center of the painting’s intense blue background, a face in minstrel makeup stares out, the image culled from a photograph of Louis Armstrong disguised as a Zulu king at Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1949.

Basquiat was especially devoted to bebop, the restlessly inventive genre typified by the likes of Parker, Davis, Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk. Basquiat’s love of bebop fueled his art, said Eleanor Nairne, co-curator of “Boom for Real.”

“Bebop was quite an intellectual movement,” she said. “It was also quite iconoclastic in wanting to break away from these older jazz harmonies. That idea of a kind of rupture, and of these musicians who were very young, vibrant powerful forces; there were lots of parallels he found with his own work and life.”

Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose at 27, attained dizzying heights during his short career. His first sale, the painting “Cadillac Moon,” was to Debbie Harry, the frontwoman of Blondie, in 1981. She paid $200.

Within months, his works were selling for tens of thousands of dollars. By his early 20s, he had made his first million. Yet Basquiat was discomforted by success. He was acutely conscious of his place as one of very few African-Americans in a predominantly white art world, where he was regarded by some as little more than an interloper.

The American art critic Hilton Kramer once described Basquiat as “a talentless hustler, street-smart but otherwise invincibly ignorant, who used his youth, his looks, his skin color and his abundant sex appeal” to win fame.

According to Ms. Nairne, Basquiat was “hugely, uncomfortably, constantly aware of the racist ways he was constantly being pigeonholed.” And he found a telling parallel between his position and that of his jazz heroes.

“These are musicians who are, in one sphere of their lives, incredibly celebrated,” Ms. Nairne said. “And in other aspects, on a daily basis and in the most banal terms, consistently reduced to the color of their skins. They are literally having to use the back entrance of clubs. There’s no way you can divorce their music from their treatment in society. There was a lot of identification in there.”

Ultimately, Basquiat felt more at home in downtown New York. He had first come to prominence in the late ’70s as a graffiti artist with a “SAMO” tag, scrawling the streets of Lower Manhattan with sardonic and elusively poetic maxims: “SAMO for the so-called avant-garde”; “Samo as an end 2 the neon fantasy called ‘life.’ ”

The downtown scene was a famously antic fusion of emergent art trends, street style, graffiti, trendsetting nightspots like the Mudd Club and Area, and upstart musical genres like New Wave and hip-hop.

Its flourishing took place against a wider backdrop of MTV, sampling, scratching, semiotics and postmodernist theory; a time when the creation and dissemination of culture seemed an increasingly fluid, boundary-free process.

“It was all merging,” Ms. Adler said. For Basquiat, “it was a period of discovery.”

"I wanna go back," by Gray.

The multifaceted nature of the scene gave Basquiat license to crisscross artistic forms on the way to developing his own style. He performed poetry onstage and produced the a mesmeric hip-hop “Beat Bop,” by the graffiti artist Rammellzee and the rapper K-Rob, that remains a genre classic.
In the band Gray, he played the synthesizer and the clarinet, and made Steve Reich-style sound experiments, looping snatches of audio on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The group performed only sporadically but drew admirers including Mr. Byrne and the hip-hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy. An Interview Magazine review described them as “an easy listening bebop industrial sound effects lounge ensemble.”

Basquiat pulled out of Gray in 1981, when painting started to command his attention in a serious way. But music still remained a significant marker of his creative achievement.
David Bowie, writing after Basquiat’s death, hailed him as a kindred spirit whose sensibility belonged as much to rock as to art.

“His work relates to rock in ways that very few other visual artists get near,” the musician noted. “He seemed to digest the frenetic flow of passing image and experience, put them through some kind of internal reorganization and dress the canvas with this resultant network of chance.”

Basquiat himself was less forthcoming. “I don’t know how to describe my work,” he once reflected. “It’s like asking Miles, ‘How does your horn sound?’”

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Basquiat dancing at the Mudd Club in 1979.

NICHOLAS TAYLOR

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Basquiat - GRAY - "I wanna go back"

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France Culture reçoit Raoul Peck pour parler de Marx

L'émission de la semaine!

I have always had a thing for geniuses, for big brains, thinkers, revolutionary minds.
Here are two of the most important men of my life, reunited...

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Par les temps qui courent  par Marie Richeux

Raoul Peck : "Si vous voulez rencontrer Voltaire, Rousseau, Hegel en un, il faut rencontrer ce jeune homme"

22/09/2017

lien : https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/par-les-temps-qui-courent/raoul-peck-si-vous-voulez-rencontrer-voltaire-rousseau-hegel-en-un-il-faut-rencontrer-ce-jeune-homme

Réalisateur, scénariste, producteur, Raoul Peck est notre invité ce soir, à l’occasion de la sortie de son film « Le jeune Karl Marx » (le 27 septembre).

La lutte des classes doit-elle se structurer autour d'idées claires ? Si l'on répond oui, quelles conditions doivent être réunies pour que ces idées soient produites ? Quelles conditions matérielles ? Quelles conditions affectives ? Quelles amitiés, quels liens, quels silences...? Le jeune Karl Marx, à la fin du film, demande à se reposer un peu. Parce que qu'écrire des livres, faire naître ou structurer une pensée, est un travail de longue haleine, comme vivre l'amour, comme faire des enfants, demandent du temps et de l’énergie. Tandis qu'ils prennent part à un tournant fondamental du 19ème siècle, Karl Marx et Friedrich Engels éprouvent aussi leur jeunesse...

L'écriture du scénario a été un très long processus qui a duré plusieurs années (...), s'attaquer à Karl Marx, c'était s'attaquer à la tête la plus géniale de ces deux derniers siècles (...) il fallait rester dans le cadre du cinéma et en même temps, ne trahir à aucun moment l'évolution de cette pensée.

[Du cadrage] Il fallait être à l'intérieur, ...de cette détresse, de cette violence, il fallait qu'on sente les coups.... C'est une manière pour moi aussi, de parfois utiliser les instruments du cinéma hollywoodien qui nous a tous éduqués, tout en les déconstruisant, et il fallait utiliser ce qu'il a de bien pour faire sentir les choses.....

Engels et Marx, c'est la rencontre entre deux génies. (...) et en même temps, la soumission de l'un d'eux à l'autre. (...) C'est une rencontre essentielle.

(...) Et ça, ça me plaisait, ces rencontres d'intelligences, de volontés...

Le jeune Karl Marx• Crédits :  Kris Dewitte

Those who know me might remember I have been writing short stories about weird, meaningless but indeed so meaningful encounters for years... And stories about siblings. Sib-links. This mystery link between people that make that, though we are so different, we feel related, or that, though we feel so alike, we are somehow taken away from each other by life...

Randomly, looking for something intuitively, some knowledge related to the scientific theory of quantum entanglement, i found this movie trailer:

'Entanglement'

Published on 16 May 2017

“Silicon Valley” star Thomas Middleditch gives a brilliant, deadpan comedic performance as a man in a downward spiral who uncovers his parents’ secret: They adopted and then gave up a baby girl before he was born. Now he’s on a mission to find his missing sister.

Director: Jason James
Writer:Jason Filiatrault

Seattle Film Festival - Official Selection
Brooklyn Film Festival - Opening Night Film

https://www.facebook.com/entanglement...

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EN-TAN-GLE-MENT:

1. The state of being entangled.
2. A difficult or complicated relationship.
3. Scientific phenomenon that occurs when two particles are fundamentally connected so that the state of one cannot be described without the other.

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Summary:

A comedy about learning to let go, and how everything is amazingly and incredibly connected. Newly divorced Ben (Thomas Middleditch, "Silicon Valley") has hit rock bottom, but fate seems to intervene each time he tries to kill himself. 

Six months after his best suicide attempt, he's doing slightly better thanks to therapy and the kindness of his neighbor Tabby (Diana Bang, "Bates Motel") until he gets some life-altering news: His parents had adopted a baby girl but gave it up once they found out that they were pregnant with Ben. 

Armed with adoption-agency records, he believes he's found his "sister" in Hanna (Jess Weixler, "The Good Wife"), a textbook manic pixie dream girl he'd coincidentally met at the pharmacy the day before.

There's a strange, otherworldly spark between them, and against their better judgement they find themselves falling for each other. 

But sometimes things are too good to be true, and Ben soon learns that the world might just be more inexplicable than he ever imagined. 

'Entanglement' is a fascinating piece of cinema, a philosophical comedy with a twisted heart about how life teaches us lessons in the strangest possible ways.


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JASON JAMES is an award winning producer/writer/director based in Vancouver and Los Angeles. He recently directed/produced the indie feature THAT BURNING FEELING (starring John Cho, Tyler Labine, and Paulo Costanzo). The film played numerous festivals, won Best Feature at VIFF, and was released in both the USA and Canada by eOne Films and Search Engine Films in 2014.

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I'm looking for a release date...

Inside the Making of 'Blade Runner 2049'

I feel the greatest thing about this sequel is... the chance to get excited about seeing the "first" Blade Runner in the first place!!

Here is a video report inside the set, by a Vice reporter:

Inside the Making of 'Blade Runner 2049' | Created with Blade Runner 2049

Published on 21 Sep 2017

The original 'Blade Runner' broke barriers in the world of special effects when it premiered in 1982. Now, the creators behind 'Blade Runner 2049' are going even bigger. VICE toured the sequel's set with the folks who brought it to life, speaking with the production designer, producer, and director Denis Villeneuve to see how it all got made. Then, we talked to the film's stars—including Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling—about what it was like living inside such a surreal world.

About "I Am Not Your Negro" - again - this time as a book!

The film, inspired by an unfinished book, is now becoming a BOOK!

I cannot say enough how immensely proud I am to have been and be again working with such a great filmmaker, with such profound inspirations.

About the English edition:

 I Am Not Your Negro

A COMPANION EDITION TO THE DOCUMENTARY FILM DIRECTED BY RAOUL PECK

By JAMES BALDWIN and RAOUL PECK

Part of Vintage International

Category: 20th Century U.S. History | Biography & Memoir

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ABOUT I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO

National Bestseller

 Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary

To compose his stunning documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined James Baldwin’s published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Weaving these texts together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote. In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.

This edition contains more than 40 black-and-white images from the film.

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About the French version:

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO
James BALDWIN Raoul PECK  Traduit par Pierre FURLAN
« Ce que les Blancs doivent faire, c'est essayer de trouver au fond d'eux-mêmes pourquoi, tout d'abord, il leur a été nécessaire d'avoir un "nègre", parce que je ne suis pas un "nègre". Je ne suis pas un nègre, je suis un homme. Mais si vous pensez que je suis un nègre, ça veut dire qu'il vous en faut un. » James Baldwin.  Dans ses dernières années, le grand écrivain américain James Baldwin a commencé la rédaction d'un livre sur l'Amérique à partir des portraits de ses trois amis assassinés, figures de la lutte pour les droits civiques : Medgar Evers, Malcolm X et Martin Luther King Jr. Partant de ce livre inachevé, Raoul Peck a reconstitué la pensée de Baldwin en s'aidant des notes prises par l'écrivain, ses discours et ses lettres. Il en a fait un documentaire – salué dans le monde entier et sélectionné aux Oscars – aujourd'hui devenu un livre, formidable introduction à l'oeuvre de James Baldwin. Un voyage kaléidoscopique qui révèle sa vision tragique, profonde et pleine d'humanité de l'histoire des Noirs aux États-Unis et de l'aveuglement de l'Occident. « Attention, chef-d'oeuvre ! »La Croix (au sujet du film documentaire I Am Not Your Negro)

Lien : http://www.laffont.fr/site/i_am_not_your_negro_&100&9782221215043.html

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Film presentations in The Guardian:

I Am Not Your Negro review – James Baldwin's words weave film of immense power

5/5stars

    

by Jordan Hoffman

Raoul Peck’s stunning look at the civil rights era ends up as the writer’s presumptive autobiography, but it gets there via an unexpected route

Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro has a “written by James Baldwin” credit in its opening sequence. At first this seems like a polite tip of the hat to the author, essayist and public intellectual who died nearly 30 years ago. Soon we realize this is an accurate statement of fact. Each line of the narration that permeates the film is taken directly from one of Baldwin’s texts or letters. His words dominate the archival clips as well.

It in no way diminishes Peck’s work as a film-maker to suggest that Baldwin’s ideas and personality are the author of this movie. It is a striking work of storytelling. By assembling the scattered images and historical clips suggested by Baldwin’s writing, I Am Not Your Negro is a cinematic séance, and one of the best movies about the civil rights era ever made.

Eschewing talking head interviews, Peck’s documentary ends up as Baldwin’s presumptive autobiography, but it gets there via an unexpected route. During the final years of his life, Baldwin was researching a book he planned to call Remember This House. It would profile three assassinated civil rights leaders: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. He intended it to be a personal work, as he knew each of these men, and telling their stories would likely be a springboard to tell his own story at a more advanced age.

Beginning with Baldwin’s pitch to his agent, we link to touch points with the slain men, hopping through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s personal essays with his public statements. (As with last year’s wonderful Best of Enemies, I Am Not Your Negro excerpts from the Dick Cavett show. I can only imagine a documentary about him is headed our way soon.) The entirety of Baldwin’s written and on-camera oeuvre eventually mixes down to a roux, and while Peck uses the occasional chapter break, the effect is more of a Chris Marker-like cine-essay than typical Frontline-like reporter’s documentary. (Though they both focus on the topic of race in America, I Am Not Your Negro is quite the opposite of ESPN’s justly celebrated OJ: Made In America.)

Peck occasionally takes advantage of some of Baldwin’s more prophetic passages to flash-forward through time. Images from Ferguson, the Obama inauguration and the dross of daytime TV aren’t there so much to say “see, he was right?” as to make us realize the timelessness of his greater arguments. Baldwin did much of his best writing about America while living as an expatriate, and this outsider’s perspective (shared by Peck, who is from Haiti) brings with it a tremendous amount of clarity. I Am Not Your Negro’s specifics are only intermittent, like reporting on different reactions between white and black audiences during Sidney Poitier films. By and large this film concerns itself with the greater philosophy of why groups in power behave the way they do. This might be the only movie about race relations I’ve ever seen that adequately explains – with sympathy – the root causes of a complacent white American mindset. And it took a black writer and director to do it.

The narration is done by Samuel L Jackson, and it’s one of the best things he’s done in years. No offense to the many boldfaced names who swoop into a recording booth to lend their voice and celebrity to a well meaning issue-oriented documentary, but what Jackson does here is give a performance. He doesn’t exactly mimic Baldwin, who we see in many of the archival clips, but he does much more than read words on the page. (I didn’t even realize it was him until the closing credits.) We live at a time when almost every notable person from the 20th century has a documentary about them streaming somewhere. That’s all well and good if they are about someone whose work you fancy. I Am Not Your Negro isn’t a special interest title, it is a film.

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I Am Not Your Negro review – astonishing portrait of James Baldwin's civil rights fight

4/5stars

    

Raoul Peck dramatises the author’s memoir of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers, in this vivid and vital documentary

by Peter Bradshaw

Raoul Peck’s outstanding, Oscar-nominated documentary is about the African American activist and author James Baldwin, author of Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Fire Next Time. Peck dramatises Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House, his personal memoir of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and civil rights activist Medgar Evers, murdered by a segregationist in 1963. Baldwin re-emerges as a devastatingly eloquent speaker and public intellectual; a figure who deserves his place alongside Edward Said, Frantz Fanon or Gore Vidal.

Peck puts Samuel L Jackson’s steely narration of Baldwin’s words up against a punchy montage of footage from the Jim Crow to the Ferguson eras, and a fierce soundtrack. (It’s incidentally a great use of Buddy Guy’s Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues, which never sounded so angry or political.) There is a marvellous clip of Baldwin speaking at the Cambridge Union Society, and another on the Dick Cavett Show – the host looking sick with nerves, perhaps because he was about to bring on a conservative intellectual for balance, whom Baldwin would politely trounce.

Baldwin has a compelling analysis of a traumatised “mirror stage” of culture that black people went through in 20th-century America. As kids, they would cheer and identify with the white heroes and heroines of Hollywood culture; then they would see themselves in the mirror and realise they were different from the white stars, and in fact more resembled the baddies and “Indians” they’d been booing. 

The film shows Baldwin refusing to be drawn into the violence/non-violence difference of opinion between King and Malcolm X that mainstream commentators leaped on, and steadily maintaining his own critique – although I feel that Peck’s juxtaposition of Doris Day’s mooning and crooning with a lynch victim is a flourish that approximates Baldwin’s anger but not his elegance. There is a compelling section on Baldwin’s discussion of dramatist Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun. It is vivid, nutritious film-making.