Raoul Peck
Author of I Am Not Your Negro (film transcript)
About the Author
Image credit: wikimedia.org/maximillianbuhn
Works by Raoul Peck
Stolen images : Lumumba and the early films of Raoul Peck : featuring the screenplays, Haitian corner, Lumumba: death… (2012) 2 copies
Part 1 2 copies
Haitian Corner [DVD] 1 copy
Le jeune Karl Marx 1 copy
Sometimes in april 🎥 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1953
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Haiti
- Birthplace
- Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Members
Reviews
I expected a James Baldwin book. I can see that the movie is probably great. But, was this a script or accompanying literature? I'm not sure was it was but I know that I wish I'd spent the time watching the movie because I probably would have liked it more. I'm moving on to actual Baldwin.
I heard about the movie, but had no idea there was a companion book to it.
"In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America."
The writing, essays, the photos that were used are powerful and makes one want to hang your head down and wonder when will we get to that mountaintop where all men and women are seen as equal no matter the color of their skin? We have a US President and conservative based Congress that think racism is okay. They think if they are not calling black people, those who worship differently than them a slur that it's okay. It's like watching everything slowly grind to a halt and you want everyone to just wake up. Call a thing the name that it is. It's racism. We have ignored it for too long and we don't seem to care to change.
Baldwin's writing is electrifying. It gets in your blood and in your head and I find myself nodding my head and feeling nothing but sorrow because in 2019 we have not come far enough. To think we are pushing ourselves back to a time in this country where we are once again seen as "other" and "wrong" I don't know what we do to combat it.
I end on this.
I am a black woman, when you tell me you don't see my color or it's unimportant, you are telling me you don't see me, that I am not important. When the default color is white and Christian you ignore what makes up this country of ours. To speak out against what we see is wrong is the American thing to do.… (more)
"In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America."
The writing, essays, the photos that were used are powerful and makes one want to hang your head down and wonder when will we get to that mountaintop where all men and women are seen as equal no matter the color of their skin? We have a US President and conservative based Congress that think racism is okay. They think if they are not calling black people, those who worship differently than them a slur that it's okay. It's like watching everything slowly grind to a halt and you want everyone to just wake up. Call a thing the name that it is. It's racism. We have ignored it for too long and we don't seem to care to change.
Baldwin's writing is electrifying. It gets in your blood and in your head and I find myself nodding my head and feeling nothing but sorrow because in 2019 we have not come far enough. To think we are pushing ourselves back to a time in this country where we are once again seen as "other" and "wrong" I don't know what we do to combat it.
"JAMES BALDWIN: Well, I don’t think there’s much hope for it, you know, to tell you the truth as long as people are using this peculiar language. It’s not a question of what happens to the Negro here or to the black man here—that’s a very vivid question for me, you know—but the real question is what is going to happen to this country. I have to repeat that."
"Forget the Negro problem. Don’t write any voting acts. We had that—it’s called the fifteenth amendment—during the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. What you have to look at is what is happening in this country, and what is really happening is that brother has murdered brother knowing it was his brother. White men have lynched Negroes knowing them to be their sons. White women have had Negroes burned knowing them to be their lovers. It is not a racial problem. It is a problem of whether or not you’re willing to look at your life and be responsible for it, and then begin to change it. That great Western house I come from is one house, and I am one of the children of that house. Simply, I am the most despised child of that house. And it is because the American people are unable to face the fact that I am flesh of their flesh, bone of their bone, created by them. My blood, my father’s blood, is in that soil."
"JAMES BALDWIN: There is nothing in the evidence offered by the book of the American republic which allows me really to argue with the cat who says to me: “They needed us to pick the cotton and now they don’t need us anymore. Now they don’t need us, they’re going to kill us all off. Just like they did the Indians.” And I can’t say it’s a Christian nation, that your brothers will never do that to you, because the record is too long and too bloody. That’s all we have done. All your buried corpses now begin to speak."
"JAMES BALDWIN: I don’t know what most white people in this country feel. But I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions. I don’t know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know we have a Christian church which is white and a Christian church which is black. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation. It means I can’t afford to trust most white Christians, and I certainly cannot trust the Christian church."
I end on this.
I am a black woman, when you tell me you don't see my color or it's unimportant, you are telling me you don't see me, that I am not important. When the default color is white and Christian you ignore what makes up this country of ours. To speak out against what we see is wrong is the American thing to do.… (more)
The companion book to the documentary of the same name is based largely on notes from James Baldwin's non-fiction work "Remember This House", which he began writing in 1979 but did not finish before his death in 1987. Baldwin's aim in writing this book was to tell the story of the United States through the lives of three seminal figures in the Civil Rights Movement, all of whom were close friends of his: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., who were assassinated in 1963, 1965 and 1968, respectively. In this book, Baldwin's excerpted words from "Remember This House" are converted into poetic form, which lends them greater power. Interspersed between these "poems" are portions of past speeches and interviews, photographs that accompany the text, and a limited number of current references, most notably the sequence that consists of apologies by Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Anthony Weiner, the former US congressman who was forced to step down after sexual misconduct and was further disgraced by additional misbehaviors, Thomas Jackson, the former chief of police of Ferguson, Missouri, and others.
Raoul Peck's compilation does a superb service in bringing James Baldwin's unflinching words to light for those of us who revere him, and to newer audiences who are unfamiliar with him and the searing power of his words. I look forward to seeing the documentary, and to returning to this excellent compilation.… (more)
Raoul Peck's compilation does a superb service in bringing James Baldwin's unflinching words to light for those of us who revere him, and to newer audiences who are unfamiliar with him and the searing power of his words. I look forward to seeing the documentary, and to returning to this excellent compilation.… (more)
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kidzdoc | 4 other reviews | Mar 27, 2017 |
kidzdoc | 4 other reviews | Mar 27, 2017 | Lists
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Statistics
- Works
- 15
- Members
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- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
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- ISBNs
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by James Baldwin, Raoul Peck
I just finished reading a book on Baldwin this month and have been wanting to read this for some time. I read some reviews that suggest to watch the documentary first for the photos so it will make more sense. It did help. Knowing more about his life helped too by reading about him earlier.
I was so sad, full of pain, hopelessness, and rage throughout most of the book. His essays are brilliant. They expose the truth that hangs in the air but no one sees it, no one seems to care.
As each of his friends died, I felt his grief. He loved both King and Malcolm and didn't take sides and said near the end the two were coming closer together. I wondered what that meant. What would have happened if they both hadn't been murdered?
Why is the white man so afraid of the black man? I am so ashamed. I am ashamed of our country that calls America free but still holds back minorities and women.
I loved and hated this book. I loved and agreed with Baldwin. (If I were black man at that time I would probably go with Malcolm, but I am atheist so that wouldn't work! Lol) I hated the book because it exposed the sad story that little has changed and I grief for my country and my black country persons. I grieved over the loss of good men by ignorant, racist that let fear and hatred rule. I grieve because this continues today.… (more)