February 1, 2017
BLACK
HISTORY
MONTH
Mississippi
Alberta
North Portland
Page 11
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East County
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James Baldwin in the documentary I Am Not Your Negro.
‘I Am Not Your Negro’
Documentary opens in theaters Friday
The incendiary new documen-
tary “I Am Not Your Negro,” a
journey into black history that
connects the past to the present,
opens in theaters nationwide on
Friday, Feb. 3
In 1979, the late black author,
playwright and poet James Bald-
win wrote a letter to his literary
agent describing his next project,
“Remember This House.” The
book was to be a revolutionary,
personal account of the lives and
successive assassinations of his
close friends, Medgar Evers, Mal-
colm X and Martin Luther King
Jr. But at the time of Baldwin’s
death in 1987, he left behind only
30 completed pages of his manu-
script.
Narrated by Samuel L. Jack-
son and with unprecedented ac-
cess to Baldwin’s original work,
award-winning filmmaker Raoul
Peck, has completed the cinematic
version of the book Baldwin never
wrote - a radical narration about
race in America and what it means
to be black in America today.
By confronting the deeper con-
nections between the lives and
assassinations of these three men,
Peck’s film uncovers a larger nar-
rative of America’s historical and
current denial and irrational rela-
tionship with race.
“I Am Not Your Negro” has
earned an Academy Award nomi-
nation for Best Documentary Fea-
ture.