Reflection and Resistance: James Baldwin and Cinema

September 14–November 16, 2017

This series explores James Baldwin’s encounter with cinema and his contributions to American intellectual life.

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James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket
I Am Not Your Negro
The Defiant Ones

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Past Films

Tongues Untied
- Thursday, November 16 7 PM
Marlon Riggs
United States, 1989
“Black men loving black men is the revolutionary act,” Marlon Riggs asserts with his experimental, poetic, erotic, fiercely proud, and highly influential personal documentary. With Richard O. Moore’s 1963 record of James Baldwin’s visit to San Francisco, Take This Hammer.

Introduction by Damon Young
The Nine Muses
- Thursday, November 9 7 PM
John Akomfrah
United Kingdom, 2011
John Akomfrah uses Homer’s Odyssey as a point of departure for this cinematic exploration of migration, exile, alienation, and the definition of home, with the experiences of Caribbean and African migrants in the 1950s as its base.

Introduction by Stephen Best
I Am Not Your Negro
- Thursday, September 14 7 PM
- Sunday, September 17 1:30 PM
- Friday, October 13 4 PM
Raoul Peck
United States, France, Belgium, Switzerland, 2016
Raoul Peck’s acclaimed documentary is an invigorating look at the great writer James Baldwin, and at the fight for civil rights both in the past and now. “An act of provocation and prophecy” (Village Voice).

Introduction by Stephen Best
James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket
- Thursday, October 5 7 PM
Karen Thorsen
United States, 1989
Digital Restoration

A who’s-who of the African American culturati—including Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and Ishmael Reed—appear in this documentary tracing Baldwin’s trajectory from Harlem to Europe and across the US. “A haunting, beautifully made biography” (Los Angeles Times).

Karen Thorsen in Person
In This Our Life
- Thursday, September 28 7 PM
John Huston
United States, 1942
Bette Davis delivers what James Baldwin called a “ruthlessly accurate” portrayal of a spoiled, amoral Southern girl who blames her black chauffeur for a fatal accident in this little-seen social drama from John Huston.

Introduction by Damon Young
The Defiant Ones
- Thursday, September 21 7 PM
Stanley Kramer
United States, 1958
Nominated for eight Academy Awards and winner of two, Stanley Kramer’s anti-racist “message” film stars Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as escaped convicts in the deep South.

Introduction by Stephen Best

Reflection and Resistance: James Baldwin and Cinema

September 14–November 16, 2017

“Someone’s got to tell it like it is. And that’s where it’s at.”
—James Baldwin

James Baldwin spent his lifetime “telling it like it is” in prose and poems, lectures and plays, demonstrations and debates, delivering a lucid analysis of the historical, political, and psychological underpinnings of racism and the structural inequality of the United States and other Western nations. Inspired by Baldwin’s dazzling work of film criticism, The Devil Finds Work, this series explores Baldwin’s encounter with cinema and his contributions to American intellectual life, alongside works by black filmmakers that also critically reflect on the history of race relations in the US and the UK. The series begins with I Am Not Your Negro, based on Baldwin’s unfinished memoir, Remember This House. It continues with two of the films at the center of Baldwin’s critical account of race and Hollywood cinema, The...

“Someone’s got to tell it like it is. And that’s where it’s at.”
—James Baldwin
James Baldwin spent his lifetime “telling it like it is” in prose and poems, lectures and plays, demonstrations and debates, delivering a lucid analysis of the historical, political, and psychological underpinnings of racism and the structural inequality of the United States and other Western nations. Inspired by Baldwin’s dazzling work of film criticism, The Devil Finds Work, this series explores Baldwin’s encounter with cinema and his contributions to American intellectual life, alongside works by black filmmakers that also critically reflect on the history of race relations in the US and the UK. The series begins with I Am Not Your Negro, based on Baldwin’s unfinished memoir, Remember This House. It continues with two of the films at the center of Baldwin’s critical account of race and Hollywood cinema, The Defiant Ones and In This Our Life. The program also includes documentaries about Baldwin’s life and his journey to San Francisco in 1963, along with essay films by John Akomfrah and Marlon Riggs that explore questions of race, immigration, and sexuality—films that, in their formal experimentations, demonstrate the cinema’s enduring power as a tool of critical reflection and resistance.
Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator
Damon Young, Assistant Professor of French and Film & Media, UC Berkeley
The Devil Finds Work and I Am Not Your Negro are available in the BAMPFA Store.

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This series, curated by Stephen Best, Damon Young, and Kate MacKay, is presented in conjunction with the UC Berkeley course The Film Essay—Cinema, the Minoritized Subject, and the Practice of Writing, taught by Best and Young. Thanks to Jennifer Bertani, WNET; Stephen Best; Livia Bloom, Icarus Films; Alex Cherian, San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive; Chris Chouinard, Park Circus; Pat Hartley; Cornelius Moore, California Newsreel; Kristie Nakamura, Warner Bros.; Jacob Perlin, Metrograph; Karen Thorsen; Alexis Whitman, Frameline Distribution; and Damon Young. Inspired by The Devil Finds Work: James Baldwin on Film, curated by Rich Blint and Jacob Perlin for the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

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Reflection and Resistance: James Baldwin and Cinema

September 14–November 16, 2017

Past Films

Tongues Untied

The Nine Muses

I Am Not Your Negro

James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket

In This Our Life

The Defiant Ones