I Am Not Your Negro

Based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript for Remember This House, a proposed book about the civil rights struggle that focused on Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, I Am Not Your Negro tells a decades-old story that carries a disturbing relevance. In that respect, it’s a lot like Jason Osder’s clear-eyed 2013 scorcher Let the Fire Burn, but in a formal respect the film piggybacks on the in-their-own-words documentary trend made popular by movies like Amy and Janis: Little Girl Blue. Directed by Raoul Peck (Lumumba) and narrated by Samuel L. Jackson (every film made in the last quarter-century), this deeply personal docu-bio is a thoroughly engrossing, powerful and necessary film. At the risk of losing all credibility, I will even use the dreaded “I” word, and declare that this is one of the most “important” films you will have the opportunity to see this year. D.B.