February 8, 2017 The Skanner Page 7
Arts & Entertainment
Raoul Peck:The “I Am Not Your Negro” Interview
By Kam Williams
For The Skanner News
the brightest generation of young au-
thors of many different origins.
R
KW: Do you think his being gay af-
fected his potential to be a leader in ad-
dition to a writer and philosopher?
RP: Not at all. To the contrary, his
very early questioning about his iden-
tity as a young preacher was key in
his quest for answers, answers that he
expected, at first, to find in the church,
where he was a pastor at age 14 and
then left when he realized that it was
creating even more contradictions
for which he could not find any justi-
fication or comfort in his struggling
to understand the world around him
and to protect himself from injustice,
isolation and violence. All these were
key elements in his long journey. His
gayness might have, for sure, caused
some members of the civil rights move-
ment to shun him at times. And part of
the more progressive leadership did
attack him. Some, like Amiri Baraka,
later regretted these attacks and ulti-
mately came to revere him. Although I
am not sure anybody could address any
homophobic remarks directly to him
without fearing an extreme response.
And these remarks would most prob-
ably take the form of political attacks.
Baldwin was already way too famous
and too unfazed by any kind of limits to
be subjected to any frontal attacks. He
didn’t let anybody define who he was
and he made sure that everybody knew
that.
aoul Peck’s complex body of work
includes feature narrative films
like “The Man by the Shore,” “Lu-
mumba,” “Sometimes in April,”
“Moloch Tropical” and “Murder in
Pacot.” His documentaries include
“Lumumba: Death of a Prophet,” “De-
sounen” and “Fatal Assistance.”
Raoul has served as jury member at
the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and at
the Berlinale. He is presently chairman
of the board of the National French film
school La Fémis, and has been the sub-
ject of numerous retrospectives world-
wide. In 2001, the Human Rights Watch
Organization awarded him with the
Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement
Award.
Raoul recently completed shooting
his latest feature film, “The Young Karl
Marx,” a European co-production, shot
in Germany and Belgium, and produced
by Velvet Film in conjunction with
Agat Films. here, he talks about his lat-
est offering, “I Am Not Your Negro,” an
Oscar-nominated documentary about
writer/social critic James Baldwin.
Kam Williams: Hi Raoul, thanks for
the interview, and congratulations on
the Oscar nomination.
Raoul Peck: Thanks, Kam.
KW: What interested you in James
Baldwin?
RP: I started to read James Baldwin
very early on in my life. At a time, as
a young adult in the ‘60s, when there
Filmmaker Raoul Peck
were not that many authors in whom
I could recognize myself, he was an
important guide and mentor to me as
he was to many others. He helped me
understand who I was and decipher
the world around me. He gave me the
words to defend myself and the argu-
mentative rhetoric to master discus-
sions with others.
KW: Where do you think he stands
in the pantheon of African American
20th Century thinkers?
RP: I think that James Baldwin is,
for sure, one of the most important
American writer/thinkers of his time...
not just African American. He sin-
gled-handily revolutionized the polit-
ical, artistic and historical discourses
about America. He created his partic-
ular and original language. At his fu-
neral, Toni Morrison said of him, “You
gave me a language to dwell in, a gift so
perfect it seems my own invention.” In-
deed, he’s opened the door for many of
KW: How would you describe Bald-
win to millennials and others substan-
tially unaware of him?
RP: James Baldwin is one of the great-
est, North American writers of the sec-
ond half of the 20th Century. A prolific
writer and a brilliant social critic, he
foreshadowed the destructive trends
happening now in the whole Western
world and beyond, while always main-
taining a sense of humanistic hope
and dignity. He explored palpable, yet
unspoken, intricacies of racial, sexual,
and class distinctions in Western so-
cieties and the inevitable, if unname-
able, tensions with personal identity,
assumptions, uncertainties, yearning,
and questing. He had an unrivaled
understanding of politics and history
and, above all, the human condition.
His prose is laser sharp. His onslaught
is massive and leaves no room for re-
sponse. Every sentence is an immedi-
ate cocked grenade. You pick it up, then
realize that it is too late. It just blows
up in your face. And yet he still man-
aged to stay human, tender, accessible.
There will hardly be anything as pre-
cise, as just, as subtle or as percussive,
then the writing of this man.
KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier
asks: What does James Baldwin mean
to you?
RP: The role he played in my life is
incommensurable as stated above.
He helped, along with a few others, to
shape the man that I am today. My debt
to him is invaluable.
Read the rest of this interview at
TheSkanner.com