Returning to the Belcourt this week is I Am Not Your Negro, a documentary that saw Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (Lumumba) take an unfinished work by the late, gay African American author James Baldwin and craft a cinematic essay that salutes Baldwin’s provocative legacy and examines race and racism throughout American history. With an off-camera Samuel L. Jackson giving Baldwin’s incendiary words a voice, Peck compares and contrasts how Black and white faces have been seen and perceived in popular culture, specifically in Hollywood. When the movie dropped a decade ago, Orange Boy was just about to start his first term of chaos and disorder, fueled mainly by ignorance and bigotry from his MAGA base. Now he’s back in the White House, doing the same shit but on a more destructive scale. Props to the Belcourt for bringing back this 93-minute wake-up call to those who need to know that racist white people have been messing shit up since way before that blowhard got into office. Screening as part of the Belcourt's Milestones of the Last Quarter Century series. Visit belcourt.org for showtimes.
May 24 & 26 at the Belcourt
2102 Belcourt Ave.
