One of the most acclaimed films of 2017, a box office hit and a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro premieres on Independent Lens tonight at 9/8c on PBS (check local listings).
I Am Not Your Negro envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a radical narration about race in America, using the writer’s original words, as read by actor Samuel L. Jackson. Alongside a flood of rich archival material, the film draws upon Baldwin’s notes on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. to explore and bring a fresh and radical perspective to the current racial narrative in America.
Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary is a journey into black history that connects the past of the civil rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for.
