I am not your negro

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Movie
German title I am not your negro
Original title I am not your negro
Country of production France , United States , Belgium , Switzerland
original language English
Publishing year 2017
length 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Raoul Peck
script Raoul Peck
production Hébert Peck ,
Rémi Grellety ,
Raoul Peck
music Alexei Aigui
cut Alexandra Strauss

I Am Not Your Negro is a documentary directed by Raoul Peck (screenplay, direction). The unfinished manuscript Remember This House by James Baldwin (1924–1987), voiced by actor Samuel L. Jackson , is the basis for Peck's cinematic collage of excerpts from media coverage, especially of the second half of the 20th century, in which he discussed white racism in American society . The film illuminates the situation of the People of Color in the USA - Baldwin speaks almost continuously of Negroes and almost never uses the word black or colored American. The opposite pole is the America of the whites; In addition to the ninth of the Afro-Americans, the indigenous peoples of the Indians are mentioned as a further minority . The box office hit film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016 and received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary . The cinema release in the USA was on February 3, 2017. In Germany, the film was shown on the arte TV station on April 25, 2017 , in the original sound with German subtitles, and the voice-over voice from hip-hop musician Samy Deluxe can be heard in German.

action

I am Not Your Negro is also the biography of the author James Baldwin, who tells a story of racial discrimination and the American civil rights movement in the 20th century based on the life stories of three friends from the civil rights movement. The friends are the human rights lawyer Medgar Evers , murdered in 1963 , the Black Muslim Malcolm X, murdered in 1965, and the Baptist pastor and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., murdered in 1968 . "The time of these lives and deaths, seen publicly, lies between 1955, when we first heard of Martin, and 1968, when he was murdered," wrote Baldwin in the manuscript "I Am Not Your Negro" begun in 1979.

The starting point of the film script is a thirty-page draft text by Baldwin for the unfinished novel Remember This House , a story of blacks in the United States. The basis for this are Baldwin's texts and his thoughts on the coexistence of white and black America. Peck uses a collage of letters that Baldwin writes to his agent Jay Acton, texts quoted from the work of Baldwin by Samuel L. Jackson , and an abundance of biographical photos and video excerpts from interviews with and reports on Baldwin. Thematically, the film is about "Chapter Two of the so-called liberation of blacks, in which the descendants of the slaves fought for their civil rights [...]." In a timeframe from 1890 to 2014, scenes of white violence against colored people of all stripes, which the history America's paced, shown. I.a. He polemicizes against the black as Uncle Tom and also cuts pictures with B. Obama against it. The historical images include the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 , police violence under Eugene “Bull” Connor in Birmingham in 1963 , the Watts riot in Los Angeles in 1965 , and the death of Michael Brown, Ferguson, 2014 . “Peck frames them with archive images and moving images: of the freedom marches in the southern states, the violent riots between white mobs and black protesters all over America and police violence - in the 1960s in Birmingham, today in Ferguson, Chicago, Detroit. The images are almost the same: bludgeoned African Americans, burning houses, faces contorted with screams. The journey into the past becomes a confrontation with the present. ”It shows how James Baldwin drives through the USA and visits the places where the decisive conflicts in the fight for black civil rights took place. “It's not about what happens to black people. The real question is, what is happening to this country? ”Baldwin said in 1968.

background

Director Raoul Peck also worked on The Young Karl Marx ( Le jeune Karl Marx ) and I Am Not Your Negro . In an interview with Fabian Tietke from the taz , Peck explains that the two films are a return to his theoretical foundations for him.

criticism

German-language reviews

I Am Not Your Negro was received consistently positively by the German-speaking critics and received numerous praise. Spiegel Online, for example, described the film as “an all-round success” and remarked: “Haitian-born Raoul Peck has made many pointed films about race relations and the violent legacy of slavery and colonialism. But with “I Am Not Your Negro” he achieved a new level of force. ”According to Susanne Mayer from ZEIT Online , the documentary about James Baldwin“ is a tightly packed biography of the author who intended to tell his story based on the story of his friends . The friends are: Medgar Evers, human rights lawyer, murdered in 1963. Malcolm X, human rights activist, murdered in 1965. Martin Luther King, pastor, murdered in 1968. "

For Philipp Holstein from the Rheinische Post , the film is “the impressive and depressing documentary that […] tells a story.” For him, Baldwin's texts unfortunately remain urgent in view of organizations such as Black Lives Matter , which campaign against racism. Inspired by the righteous anger about the circumstances and paired with a powerful desire for enlightenment, according to the words of critic Luidgard Koch and director Raoul Peck, a burning essay film succeeds. “His brilliantly composed review of the era of the American civil rights movement and the life and work of the late African-American writer James Baldwin is shocking. The native Haitian shows unmistakably that oppression, injustice, racism and class differences have by no means disappeared through global neoliberalism. "

Knut Elstermann from the MDR described the film as a “great documentary about the homosexual writer and the turbulent sixties”, the “a brilliant montage of archive material, interviews with the linguistic and astute author who died in 1987, and reflections on the condition of someone who is still racist Society ”. In the words of Susanne Lenz in her review for the Berliner Zeitung , I Am Not Your Negro is a stirring documentary in which Baldwin's text and Peck's images, the film clips, photos, and news images complement each other so congenially, historically and currently. Gia Maihofer from the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel thinks that director Peck created an "essayistic approach to Baldwin's thinking". The director created an amalgam from the rich literary oeuvre of Peck's 1960s, which reveals the psychopathology and paranoid imagination of white America, in private life as well as in popular culture. “The journey into the past becomes a confrontation with the present”, in which white, liberal America narcotizes itself with a media fantasy world and in this fantasy world maintains the illusion of its own innocence. “It refuses to deal with the history of slavery, segregation and oppression, which Baldwin repeatedly calls for […].” Maihofer sums up Peck's documentary: “Peck's impressive homage is part of this work of remembrance. With “I'm not your Negro” he succeeded in creating a pointed essay on America's deep-seated racism and a high point in his political world cinema. A film of the hour whose message and ambassador have lost none of their relevance. "

Geri Krebs said in the " Neue Zürcher Zeitung " that Raoul Peck is doing a Tour d'Horizon through the history of black people in the USA with I Am Not Your Negro , which "tells an example of the past while keeping an eye on the present." And when the riots of Watts in 1965 collide with those of Ferguson in 2014 in the news images, the relevance of the past cannot be denied. According to ttt - title, theses, spirited author Joachim Gaertner, Raoul Peck made “a fascinating documentary in which one learns more about American history than in any history book.” Gaertner sums up with a view to US President Donald Trump : “It is It's frightening to see how topical Baldwin's analyzes are to this day. The film makes it clear: Under today's president, who openly propagates racist stereotypes, the fight for civil rights is starting all over again. [...] A solution, concluded Baldwin, cannot be found if blacks integrate into white society, but only if they bring their own identity and history to the dream of a new, shared America "

According to Weiland Freund von Der Welt, I Am Not Your Negro tells the story of the civil rights movement, the story of Medgar Evers , Malcolm X and Martin Luther King , the story of James Baldwin and the story after: Rodney King , Barack Obama , Trayvon Martin ; Selma , White House , Ferguson . "One of the reasons" I Am Not Your Negro "is an impressive, a great documentary film, because it takes an hour and a half, which with some justification could have taken up the space of a multi-part series." Jan Kedves from the Süddeutsche Zeitung emphasizes that Raoul Peck succeeded in creating a very sensitive portrait of the fighter James Baldwin, whose weapon was absolutely rhetoric. He attests to the film that it “does three things in a remarkable way: it reminds us of Baldwin and illustrates his intention to tell the story of America through the lives of three of his murdered friends”. This means Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. And thirdly: The fact that blacks in the USA are not blacks but are made blacks by the whites has not been shown so clearly in a film for a long time. ”Julian Brimmers also noticed the parallels between the two, noted by Weiland Freund 1960s and current events of the 2010s in the USA by referring to the following aspect of the documentary: “Here everything happens at once: the racist riots in Little Rock in 1957 and the 'Black Lives Matter' protests in Ferguson in 2014, the swearing-in of Barack Obama next to the murders of Evers, Malcolm X and King, the uprisings in Watts of 1965 next to pictures of the youngest victims of police violence. “Overall, I Am Not Your Negro is less of a historical biopic than an invitation to the viewer to accept his own tolerance and ability to act questioning.

Foreign language reviews

The US magazine Entertainment Weekly lacks subtlety in the black and white archive images in Peck's collage. Given the similarity between the 1960s police brutality images and the 2014 Ferguson images of black student Michael Brown being shot dead by white cops, Chris Nashawaty admits that it is a very sad episode in American history .

The British daily The Guardian was enthusiastic and called the film one of the best films about the civil rights movement ever made.

Awards (selection)

At the Berlin International Film Festival 2017 , the production was awarded the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary. In the same category , the film was recognized at the 2016 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. There are also further nominations and awards at various festivals.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for I Am Not Your Negro . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Susanne Mayer: "The world is not white" . In: Die Zeit , April 5, 2017. Retrieved April 10, 2017. 
  3. ↑ a b c Wieland Freund : Documentary: When Samuel L. Jackson reads “I am not your negro” , WeltN24 . March 29, 2017. Retrieved April 2, 2017. 
  4. ^ A b Luitgard Koch: Film review I am not your Negro . In: programmkino.de - cinema magazine for German art house and art house cinemas . Retrieved April 2, 2017. 
  5. ^ A b c d Giacomo Maihofer: In the cinema: essay film "I'm not your Negro": America's guilty conscience . In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 30, 2017. Retrieved April 2, 2017. 
  6. ↑ a b c d Joachim Gaertner: "I Am Not Your Negro": A brilliant film essay and a burning plea against racism . In: ttt - titel, thesen, temperamente , ARD, March 12, 2017. Archived from the original on March 21, 2017. Retrieved April 2, 2017. 
  7. ↑ Fabian Tietke: “Everything is based on reality” In: die tageszeitung , February 16, 2017 (interview with Raoul Peck ).
  8. ↑ Flashes of inspiration after a night through , spiegel.de, February 13, 2017, last accessed on March 4, 2017.
  9. ^ A b Philipp Holstein: James Baldwin is rediscovered . In: Rheinische Post , March 30, 2017. Archived from the original on March 30, 2017. Retrieved on April 2, 2017. 
  10. ↑ Knut Elstermann: Film start: "I Am Not Your Negro" - "Reflections of a still racist society" . Central German radio. Archived from the original on April 2, 2017. Retrieved April 2, 2017.
  11. ↑ Susanne Lenz: Racism in the USA: A touching film about James Baldwin . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 29, 2017. Accessed April 2, 2017. 
  12. ↑ a b Geri Krebs: "I Am Not Your Negro": With a stretched fist against the wind . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , March 15, 2017. Archived from the original on April 3, 2017. Retrieved on April 2, 2017. 
  13. ↑ Jan Kedves: Documentary: History is Present . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 30, 2017. Archived from the original on April 2, 2017. Retrieved April 2, 2017. 
  14. ↑ a b Julian Brimmers: Racism in the USA: The anger that has just been controlled . In: Spiegel Online , March 29, 2017. Archived from the original on April 2, 2017. Retrieved April 2, 2017. 
  15. ↑ Chris Nashawaty: "I Am Not Your Negro: EW review" , in: Entertainment Weekly of January 26, 2017, last accessed on March 4, 2017
  16. ↑ Jordan Hoffman: I Am Not Your Negro review - James Baldwin's words weave film of immense power ' , The Guardian, October 20, 2016, last accessed March 4, 2017.