First of, you have to hand it to Samuel Jackson. He could make my tax statement sound captivating. Next, director Raoul Peck manages to back him up with a stunning visual collage of archive footage.So "I Am Not Your Negro" is a surprisingly easy watch, despite the fact that it is based on an unfinished script by James Baldwin So why is this movie called "I Am Not Your Negro"? I don't know. And in any case, I don't want "you" to be my negro. Baldwin's text is called, equally obliquely, but less catchily, "Remember This House".What I got from this movie was that James Baldwin was a trained preacher, who tried to be an acolyte to far more charismatic civil rights activists (in the case case of Malcolm X, black racist) Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., who were murdered before they were 40 years old (and in Malcolm's case, by black henchmen of his own cult). The film has to pussyfoot around the fact that two other protagonists of the era, the Kennedy brothers, were also murdered, despite the fact that they were not downtrodden and as white as the cliffs of Dover.Baldwin is seen trying to convince liberal white Americans, who were all for civil rights in the first place, that fighting racism was somehow not an act of altruism but somehow would contribute to their own betterment.And also that the white sheriff in "In The Heat Of The Night" and "Mr. Tibbs" have an erotic tension going on between them.

This documentary is without a doubt one of the greatest documentaries regarding the black (and white) experience in America. I was glued. You if you have not seen it I say it is a MUST SEE.I was riveted to it and cried through it because I remember the times of which it spoke and it spoke to me. In the end Baldwin says "Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed that is not faced." I believe if one sees it it should speak to you. It should especially in this hour of Trump be required viewing in this nation in every school of this nation. I was so moved! This must see is profoundly brilliant. White supremacists and Trump SHOULD see it but I am sure will not. If they do it should make him and them feel profoundly guilty for the racist divide they are helping perpetuate. United we stand but divided we surely will fall. Those who view this piece of artistic excellence should heed what it has to say.

A brilliant cine-essay that uses James Baldwin's electrifying prose as a launch pad for a critique of Hollywood cinema-as-embodiment-of-the- American-ego. The ego, in Freudian terms, is the mask of the unconscious, but one can trace the true nature of that unconscious by examining the ego, as one can map a face by feeling its contours through a mask. The N----- is, the film argues, the foundational character of the story Amerika tells itself about itself. For the N is the castrated other, the desexualized one that assures the viewer they have Power. Does not this imaginary embodiment of castration point to the puritanical impotence of the self? Is the most violent empire in history, which elected the likes of Donald Trump as its representative, not built by and for the needs of cowards?

I gave this documentary a slightly higher score than it might otherwise have because of it's timing. Perhaps it would be good at anytime, but it has an added poignancy because the message of American self destruction (there is even a little Trump excerpt) is the also the story that James Baldwin tells with the notes from his unprinted history of civil rights.Within the pantheon of the black movement, Baldwin was not similar to either Malcolm X or Martin Luther King; he was a transgressive wordsmith - not a fighter or a stoic example. But he is the perfect foil for this documentary that melds the 60s with today, as he understood that racial hate was a self hate that cannot easily be quenched. His important point is that American white society cannot square it's myths and dreams with reality. Samuel Jackson's narration adds to this solidly put together documentary that keeps the viewer engaged all the way.This film has a slight family superficiality sometimes, with little depth attempted with the lives of the black heroes who already have several films dedicated to them. A good knowledge of the time line is assumed, as the film jumps up and down it regularly.Many images, old and new are (still) shocking - though Baldwins diagnosis remains the bitter pill that America cannot swallow.