Thursday, March 28, 4:30 pm, Popp-Martin Student Union Theater
(Building 69 on this map; closest parking is Union Deck)
Saturday, March 30, 11:00 am, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African- American Arts + Culture, Uptown Charlotte
Documentary by Raoul Peck, Haiti/France 2017/95 min.
In English
Presented as part of The Tournées Festival, made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, Florence Gould Foundation and Highbrow Entertainment.
Additional sponsors are the Alliance Française de Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte French Club.
There will be panel discussions after the film:
Thursday, March 28: with UNC Charlotte faculty Dr. Juan Meneses (English), Dr. Malin Pereira (English; Executive Director of the Honors College), Dr. Mark Pizzato (Theater; Film Studies), Dr. Eddy Souffrant (Philosophy)
Saturday, March 30: with Gantt Center guests and Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachery, Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at UNC Charlotte
Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck’s brilliant documentary on racism in
America is an essential work for our era, drawing a clear line from the
Civil Rights struggle to today’s Black Lives Matter movement via the
thought of James Baldwin, one of the most lucid, fearless Ameri-
can thinkers on race (and many other matters). Based on Baldwin’s
unfinished manuscript Remember This House, which considered
the history of racism through memories of Baldwin’s friends the civil
rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers,
I Am Not Your Negro analyzes white denial and black experience of
racial oppression in a historical and contemporary context, bringing
Baldwin’s observations into the present through powerful juxtaposi-
tions of his words (read in voiceover by Samuel L. Jackson) and, for
instance, images of the Ferguson protests. Peck also generously culls
from archival sources, notably the extensive talk show appearance in
which Baldwin, an eloquent and spirited orator, publicly expresses that
the “negro” is a white construct, and anything but a definition of who
he is. By providing an impassioned, accessible introduction to James
Baldwin’s work and thought, Peck has given us a crucial reference to
address ongoing injustice in the United States.
