Language: English
Director: Raoul Peck
Screenplay: James Baldwin & Raoul Peck
Narrator: Samuel L. Jackson
When: 8 March, 20h00
Where: PULP cinema
Cost: R40 online | R50 at the door
Awards: Cesar Award for Best Documentary, BAFTA Award for Best Documentary
I Am Not Your Negro, the award-winning documentary directed by Raoul Peck, compellingly blends the historical and present day racial injustices experienced in America with great authority and truthful insight.
Viewers snapped and clicked their fingers in agreement during the screening of the documentary at the US Woordfees, due to the emotive language and unembellished visuals.
It was difficult for audience members to not succumb to emotion, as documentary director Raoul Peck was able to transport the viewer into the experiences being played out on screen. Photographs of KKK injustices perpetrated upon black Americans, such as lynching, stunned the audience members and stirred sympathy. Although triggering, the footage converted these events into reality for viewers.
The documentary was inspired by the incomplete 30-page manuscript Remember This House by novelist James Baldwin, who was a pivotal and highly respected voice in racial discussions from the 1950s in America and Western Europe.
Baldwin’s manuscript aimed to illustrate the oppressive racial structures and stigmas in America through the lives of three civil rights movement pioneers: Malcolm X, Medgar Evans and Martin Luther King Jr.
The use of these three historical figures effectively structured the documentary into a fluid conversation in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, while reflecting on Baldwin’s writings which engage with racism in America.
“If we were white, our heroes would be your heroes too. Malcolm X would still be alive…when the Israelis or the Poles pick up guns and say ‘give me liberty or give me death,’ the entire white world applauds. When a Black man says exactly the same thing, he is judged a criminal and treated like one, ” wrote Baldwin in his manuscript.
Peck provided a lense into the mind of Baldwin by articulating the decades of anti-black Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation, as well as the ever present police brutality which has shaped racism since the 1960s. This was done through the revival of old video footage, news clips, and vintage photographs that brought to life the unnerving reality of what life is like for African-Americans.
Protesters in Little Rock, Arkansas (1956) declare that mixing races is communism during a rally.
PHOTO: Library of Congress
“The documentary brought reality home,” stated Lonwabo Lwazi Nkonzo (20), a third year student at Stellenbosch University, who further reiterated that racial injustice is still very prevalent.
“History is not the past, it is the present that we live in”, said Baldwin in the film.
Nkonzo further state that the film embodies not only the American condition, but also the South African condition.
He further explained that in order for us to truly embody South Africa’s rainbow nation, people need to acknowledge its past, especially at a university celebrating its 100 year anniversary, when people of colour were only allowed to enrol 33 years ago.
The documentary is a must-see for all Stellenbosch residents and students. It is a powerful tool in facilitating important dialogue and mobilising people to rethink racial relations.