SYNOPSIS
I Am Not Your Negro. Narrated by SAMUEL L. JACKSON and with unprecedented access to JAMES BALDWIN’S original work, RAOUL PECK has completed the cinematic version of the book BALDWIN never wrote – a radical narration about race in America that tracks the lives and assassinations of BALDWIN’s friends, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Whilst it is partly anchored in the struggle for equality in the 50s and 60s, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is about what it means to be black in America today.
By confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassinations of these three men, we uncover a larger narrative of America’s historical and current denial and irrational relationship with race. This ‘history of violence’ is also told through the long simplified narrative that Hollywood recounts as a story between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ or ‘right and wrong’, reflects our current racial precariousness. I AM NOT YOUR NEGROis also the autopsy of the American racial imagery and iconography.