Each line of narration in Raoul Peck’s remarkable film I Am Not Your Negro is taken directly from James Baldwin’s writings, letters, and interviews, or video clips featuring him. The film’s starting point is the most famous book Baldwin never wrote: in his final years, he had begun work on a book about Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King.

Baldwin’s 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 (magnificently read by Samuel L. Jackson) with his public statements, and assembling still images and historical clips that bring to life the fraught history of American racism.

118 pages.