The Doc "I am Not Your Negro" Based on James Baldwin's Writings, Dir by Raoul Peck

Raoul Peck (b Haiti 1953) moved with his family to the Dem Republic of the Congo (DRC) when he was 8 to flee Duvalier's dictatorship rule.  Peck is an award winning documentarian/filmmaker & political activist.  His film "I am Not Your Negro" based on the writings of James Baldwin's "Remember This House" & Baldwin's commentaries is nominated for this year's Oscars for Best Documentary.  Peck brilliantly & correctly credits Baldwin as the writer for the film and does not add any other written text.  The film is based on the Baldwin's submitted drafts to his editor on the lives on Malcom X, Medgar Evers & Martin Luther King (MLK).  Baldwin befriended all 3 civil rights leaders & activists (after a contentious initial relationship with Malcom X.)  He never completed his writings.  He notes all 3 men were killed before age 40.  The opposing philosophies & actions of MLK & Malcom X are noted.  And, their having merged closer in their beliefs & pontifications.  The doc specifically deals with the issue of how white America "doesn't know what to do with the black population."  Baldwin left the US for France out of frustration & fear of being persecuted as a black man.  Known for his literary achievements in fiction, essays, playwrighting & eloquent & direct commentating, Baldwin's assertions of the brutalities & dehumanization of blacks in our nation speak loudly.  There's footage of police violence aimed at blacks during the 50's civil rights movement are paired with news reels of riots & killings of blacks from the 1960's-2014 and horrifying images of lynchings.  Baldwin addresses the high school students who were spat on & humiliated when 1st integrating schools in the south.  He admits being shamed into returning to the US for not having supported these young people; not any sense of homesickness or attachment to the US except for the people of Harlem.  The prediction of Robert Kennedy of a black president in 40 years time exacerbates the lack of real progress that has not evolved in terms of social equality or even an honest addressing of racial issues confronting our nation from its inception.   Baldwin maintains apathy has led the white majority to become moral monsters by considering people of color as inhuman. "Apathy is ignorance which is segregation."  Baldwin's pronouncement "America does not know what to do with the Negro" is accurate & prophetic.  "Buried corpses are now beginning to speak.  The story of the Negro is the story of America.  It is not a pretty story."  The film corroborates Baldwin's contentions & still contains an optimistic vantage for the future.  "Not everything faced can be changed.  But nothing can be changed unless it is faced.  We are our history."