By Finn Hogan
I Am Not Your Negro is an Oscar-nominated documentary comprised of archival footage, letters and notes from the work of James Baldwin, the writer, activist and intellectual.
It played at the 2017 New Zealand International Film Festival and was such a hit, it's returning to cinemas this week.
Baldwin was prolific throughout the 1950s and '60s as a leading figure in the civil rights movement.
He occupied a middle-ground between the militant activism of Malcolm X and the pacifism of Martin Luther King Jnr.
Baldwin was a friend to both men and lived through both of their murders.
Baldwin himself died of natural causes in France in 1987, while working on his book Remember This House. It was based his experiences during the civil rights movement and his relationship to its martyred heroes.
Much of I Am Not Your Negro is built around this unfinished book.
Director Raoul Peck spoke with Newshub ahead of his film's return to New Zealand cinemas.
Unlike a traditional documentary, the film contains no interviews, which was of crucial importance to Peck from the very beginning.
"I started by saying: I want to make an impossible film. Impossible for many reasons; impossible because I am going to be inside the head of an author, using only his words, making you see him on screen, make you hear his voice and convince you he's talking to you, even though he is dead.
"I wanted to completely inhabit Baldwin without translating him, without standing in front of him. I did something new in my film career, I became modest. I wanted to let him speak, and not put myself in front of him and closely as possible try and finish the book he was trying to write."
Being born in Haiti, the first black republic, made Baldwin's work particularly resonant with Peck, who spoke about the effect Baldwin first had on him.
"I was lucky enough to bump into his work very early. I was 17-18, I was studying in Berlin at the time. I got one of his books through a friend of mine and it was a shock. Remember in the '70s, black literature and black intellectual thinkers were not in the mainstream at all and not often recognised. There were very few books I could really relate to. With Baldwin I felt 'This is me, this is my life, this is my history, this is what I'm going through.'
"What Baldwin does is reject the entire concept of racism, the entire ideology and instead turns it against the perpetrators. He says 'this is not my problem, this is your problem'. It's almost therapeutic to be told that you are not the problem here. For a young man that is an incredible asset and strength and direction."
Baldwin himself wrote extensively on the power of cinema, most notably in his book The Devil Finds Work. To Baldwin, Hollywood helped to create many of the negative stereotypes around black Americans, while reinforcing the superiority of the heroic white characters.
"Hollywood has this incredible capacity to brainwash you. I grew up watching Hollywood films and it's very hard to resist being drawn into the narrative of the [white] hero. When you learn how to deconstruct that story, like Baldwin did, you use it against them. It's like judo, you use the weight of your enemy against him.
"I know the tools. I make films because I am in politics, not because I am in love with film. I love my job but the purpose is to fight. Everything I do is to give instruments to our fight, but that isn't to say quality doesn't matter. We had a period of militant film where people didn't care if the film was good, our audience already agreed with it. I'm not trying to convince people who are already convinced, I am trying to reach for the wider public - all my films are for the wider public, so I have to give it to them in the best form."
On the subject of a post-Obama, Trumpian America, Peck is pragmatic.
"At the stage we are at now, we better get Baldwin back on the stage, we need him on the frontlines so we can fight properly… It's not about being an optimist or a pessimist. It's about saying 'I don't have a choice, I have to fight'. The world of the future will be what we build together, collectively and individually. There will be no miracle, it's not about hope, it's about facing the reality."
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I Am Not Your Negro opens in New Zealand cinemas tomorrow.
Newshub.
