Race Divide’

i am not your negroTense times indeed are confronting the United States. Under the newly minted Trump administration there is no telling where things will go. Even under Barack Obama racial tensions seemed to be reaching the boiling point. Likely to set off even more emotional debate is I Am Not Your Negro. This well-presented documentary from Mongrel Media and Amazon Films takes a no-holds barred look at Black-White relations in the U.S. Over the years. Relive past and present turmoil at The Van City Theatre.

Here the filmmakers slyly make a movie out of a bare 30 page manuscript delivered by noted author James Baldwin. Three black lads are at the heart of his thesis and director/writer Raoul Peck shines considerable light on the well-thought out linkage between the slayings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm X and Medgar Evers and current problems plaguing the United Stares along racial lines, Front and centre here is the plight of the Negro and the march for civil rights.

Full of emotional clips and vintage footage from the turbulent 60s Peck draws a line between what happened then and what is going on now in big city America as it looks again like Afro-Americans are being abused by some uncaring law officials and maybe the system at large.

How it will all end is anybody’s guess. What I am Not Your Negro does do is shine a bright light on discrimination – both then and now. Under the forceful narration of Samuel L. Jackson you can almost feel first hand the emotional pain and pent-up frustration experienced by so many. Sparks do fly throughout this soulful movie.