The documentary I Am Not Your Negro is scheduled at 7 p.m. Feb 28, March 2, and March 5 at the Normal Theater, and at 7 p.m. Feb. 28 at the AMC Starplex in Normal.
In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends — Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
At the time of Baldwin’s death in 1987, he left behind only thirty completed pages of his manuscript.
Now, in his incendiary new documentary, filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin’s original words and flood of rich archival material.
I Am Not Your Negro is “a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter.” It questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges “the very definition of what America stands for.”