10th edition CIFF – 10-14 April 2024

FILMS 2024:  Caribbean Focus | Feature Films | Short Films | Yellow Robin Award Nominees
FILMS 2019: A – E | F – L | M – P | Q – S | T –  Z | Feature Film | Short Film
FILMS 2018: A – E | F – L | M – P | Q – S | T –  Z | Feature Film | Short Film
FILMS 2017: A – E | F – L | M – P | Q – S | T –  Z | Feature Film | Short Film
FILMS 2016: A – E | F – L | M – P | Q – S | T –  Z | Feature Film | Short Film
FILMS 2015: A – E | F – L | M – P | Q – S | T –  Z | Feature Film | Short Film

I Am Not Your Negro (2017 Feature Film)

Raoul Peck | USA, France, Belgium, Switzerland | 2016 | Documentary | color/b&w | DCP | 93 min | English

“The negro story in America is America’s story. And it’s not a good story,” wrote American author, poet and social critic James Baldwin (1924-1987), whose writings and statements about the American civil rights movement constitute the core of this impressive documentary that was nominated for an Oscar in 2017.
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At the close of the 1970s Afro-American author James Baldwin started work on a revolutionary, personal book entitled Remember This House about three murdered friends who played key roles in the American civil rights movement: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King jr. and Malcolm X. Ultimately, the project was never finished, but the 30-page manuscript found after Baldwin’s death in 1987 constituted a point of departure for Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck to make a layered portrait of the author that centers on the latter’s unforgiving analysis of American society and in particular its racism.
Peck mainly lets Baldwin do the talking (Samuel L. Jackson provides the voice-over) and links the author’s words to footage and images from the past and present. For instance, he shows viewers archival footage of the protests in Birmingham in 1963 as well as the #BlackLivesMatter protests in Ferguson. He also juxtaposes John Wayne’s macho-heroism with Sidney Poitier’s asexual representation.

Place: CINEMA 2

Date: 7 April 2017

Time: 21:45

Duration: 1:10

Place: CINEMA 2

Date: 8 April 2017

Time: 11:00

Duration: 1:13

Place: CINEMA 2

Date: 9 April 2017

Time: 19:15

Duration: 1:10

Year in
Festival

2017

Director

Raoul Peck

Camera

Henry Adebonojo
Bill Ross
Turner Ross

Cast

voice of Samuel L. Jackson

Country

USA
France
Belgium
Switzerland

Editor

Alexandra Strauss

Language

English

Length

93 min

Music

Alexei Aigui

Producer

Rémi Grellety
Raoul Peck
Hébert Peck

Production Company

Velvet Film

Sales

Wide House

Scenario

Raoul Peck
based on the project Remember This House by James Baldwin

Sound Design

Valérie Le Docte
David Gillain

Year of Production

2016

Website

www.widehouse.org/film/i-am-not-your-negro

Raoul PECK (1953, Haiti) graduated from the film academy of West Berlin in 1988. Since then he has directed and produced documentaries, feature films and TV series in a range of countries. Furthermore, he was Haiti’s Minister of Culture from 1996 to 1997. Peck has been the president of the French film school La Fémis since 2010. His documentary I Am Not Your Negro (2016) has won many international awards including the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016 and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2017.

 

Filmography

(selection) Haitian Corner (1988), Lumumba: La mort du prophète/Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (1992, doc), L’homme sur les quais/The Man by the Shore (1993), Desounen, Dialogue with Death (1994, short doc, TV), Haiti: Le silence des chiens/Haiti, Silence of the Dogs (1994, short doc, TV), Corps plongés/It’s Not About Love (1997, TV), Lumumba (2000), Le profit et rien d’autre/Profit and Nothing But! (2001, doc, TV), Sometimes in April (2005), L’affaire Villemin (2006, TV), L’école du pouvoir (2008, TV), Moloch tropical (2009), Assistance mortelle/Fatal Assistance (2013, doc, TV), Murder in Pacot (2014), I Am Not Your Negro (2016, doc)