MIFF 2018, XI: 400 years of the Negro

That is what it took for the black people in America to get civil rights. And almost prophetically, the then Attorney-General and brother of the President, Robert Kennedy predicted that America would have a black President in 40 years. But not before thousands had been brutalised, beaten and even killed, including leaders like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., none of whom lived to be 40.  

Oscar nominated documentary on the American Civil Rights Movement, I Am Not Your Negro, was the inaugural film of the Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation films, MIFF 2018, screened at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, flagging off the 15^th edition of MIFF. The film is one of the most talked about documentaries in recent times and has won top awards in Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and 8 other international festivals. It is 93 minutes long and is directed by Raoul Peck, who has been the Minister of Culture in his native country, Haiti.

Proving fact is stranger than fiction, the film has a history quite its own. In 1979, black American author James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent, describing his next project, to be called 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. But at the time of Baldwin’s death, in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of his manuscript. I Am Not Your Negro envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a radical narration about race in America, using the writer’s original words, as read with great impact by actor Samuel L. Jackson. Alongside a flood of rich archival material, which included generous doses of film clips from Stagecoach and Uncle Tom’s cabin, the film draws upon Baldwin’s notes on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. He deftly uses brief episodes to explore and bring a fresh and radical perspective to the current racial narrative in America.

Raoul Peck’s body of work includes feature narrative films like The Man by the Shore (Competition Cannes 1993), Lumumba (Director’s Fortnight, Cannes 2000, bought and aired by HBO), Sometimes in April (HBO, Berlinale 2005), Moloch Tropical (Toronto 2009, Berlin 2010) and Murder in Pacot (Toronto 2014, Berlin 2015). His documentaries include ( (Patrice) Lumumba, Death of a Prophet (1990), Desounen (1994, BBC) and Fatal Assistance (Berlinale, Hot Docs 2013), which was supported by the Sundance Institute and Britdoc Foundation (UK) and broadcast on major TV channels (Canal+, ARTE, etc.)

Peck has served as jury member at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and at the Berlinale, is presently chairman of the board of the national French film school, La Fémis, and has been the subject of numerous retrospectives worldwide. In 2001, the Human Rights Watch organisation awarded him the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award. His latest work is the feature The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx), a European co-production, shot in Germany and Belgium, which was shown and highly appreciated at the Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI) and the International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

There were a few technical glitches but the patient audience took them in its stride, for the content was riveting. Noted director Gautam Ghose, who played the villain in Majid Majidi’s Beyond the Clouds, the Opening Film at IFFI last year, was the Chief Guest. Mike Pandey, President IDPA, did part of the honours. Director General of the Films Division, Manish Desai, welcomed the gathering while actress/compère Ruby Bhatia conducted the proceedings. Members of the two juries—five national and five international personalities—were presented on stage. A dance troupe from Odisha, called Prince, that has won an award at the TV show India’s Got Talent, performed a stylised ballet-inspired modern interpretation of tales from the life of Lord Krishna, the avatar of the deity, Vishnu.