John Pilger’s call to ‘break the silence’ at the Power of the Documentary Festival in Sydney
The term ‘documentary’ was coined by the Scottish director John Grierson. ‘The drama of film,’ he said, ‘is on your doorstep. It is wherever there is exploitation and cruelty.’
I like those words: ‘on your doorstep’.
What they say is that the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people have given us the art form that is the documentary film.
A documentary is not reality TV. Political documentary is not the consensual game played by politicians and journalists called ‘current affairs’.
Great documentaries frighten the powerful, unnerve the compliant, expose the hypocritical. Great documentaries make us think, and think again, and speak out, and even take action.
The festival will show a remarkable film entitled I Am Not Your Negro, in which the writer James Baldwin speaks not only for African-Americans but for those who are cast aside everywhere, and these include the First Nations people of Australia, still invisible in the country that is unique only because of them.
John Pilger, 28 November 2018 (full transcript at johnpilger.com)
Raoul Peck on ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ and James Baldwin
I started reading James Baldwin when I was a 15-year-old boy searching for rational explanations to the contradictions I was confronting in my already nomadic life, which took me from Haiti to Congo to France to Germany and to the United States of America. Together with Aimée Césaire, Jacques Stéphane Alexis, Richard Wright, Gabriel García Márquez and Alejo Carpentier, James Baldwin was one of the few authors that I could call ‘my own’. Authors who were speaking of a world I knew, in which I was not just a footnote. They were telling stories describing history and defining structure and human relationships which matched what I was seeing around me. I could relate to them. You always need a Baldwin book by your side.
I came from a country which had a strong idea of itself, which had fought and won against the most powerful army of the world (Napoleon’s) and which had, in a unique historical manner, stopped slavery in its tracks, creating the first successful slave revolution in the history of the world, in 1804.
I am talking about Haiti, the first free country of the Americas. Haitians always knew the real story. And they also knew that the dominant story was not the real story.
The successful Haitian Revolution was ignored by history (as Baldwin would put it: because of the bad niggers we were) because it was imposing a totally different narrative, which would have rendered the dominant slave narrative of the day untenable. The colonial conquests of the late 19th century would have been ideologically impossible if deprived of their civilizational justification. And this justification would have no longer been needed if the whole world knew that these ‘savage’ Africans had already annihilated their powerful armies (especially French and British) less than a century ago.
So what the four superpowers of the time did in an unusually peaceful consensus, was to shut down Haiti, the very first Black Republic, put it under strict economical embargo and strangle it to its knees into oblivion and poverty.
And then they rewrote the whole story.
Flash forward. I remember my years in New York as a child. A more civilized time, I thought. It was the sixties. In the kitchen of this huge middle-class apartment in the former Jewish neighbourhoods of Brooklyn, where we lived with several other families, there was a kind of large oriental rug with effigies of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King hanging on the wall, the two martyrs, both legends of the time.
Except the tapestry was not telling the whole truth. It naively ignored the hierarchy between the two figures, the imbalance of power that existed between them. And thereby it nullified any ability to understand these two parallel stories that had crossed paths for a short time, and left in their wake the foggy miasma of misunderstanding.
I grew up in a myth in which I was both enforcer and actor. The myth of a single and unique America. The script was well written, the soundtrack allowed no ambiguity, the actors of this utopia, Black or white, were convincing. The production means of this Blockbuster-Hollywood picture were phenomenal. With rare episodic setbacks, the myth was strong; better, the myth was life, was reality. I remember the Kennedys, Bobby and John, Elvis, Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Dr Richard Kimble and Mary Tyler Moore very well. On the other hand, Otis Redding, Paul Robeson and Willie Mays are only vague reminiscences. Faint stories ‘tolerated’ in my memorial hard disk. Of course there was Soul Train on television, but it was much later, and on Saturday morning, where it wouldn’t offend any advertisers.
Medgar Evers died on 12 June 1963.
Malcolm X died on 21 February 1965.
And Martin Luther King Jr died on 4 April 1968.
In the course of five years, these three men were assassinated.
These three men were Black, but it is not the colour of their skin that connected them. They fought on quite different battlefields. And quite differently. But in the end, all three were deemed dangerous. They were unveiling the haze of racial confusion.
James Baldwin also saw through the system. And he loved these men. These assassinations broke him down.
He was determined to expose the complex links and similarities among these three individuals. He was going to write about them. He was going to write his ultimate book, Remember This House, about them.
I came upon these three men and their assassination much later. These three facts, these elements of history, from the starting point, the ‘evidence’ you might say, form a deep and intimate personal reflection on my own political and cultural mythology, my own experiences of racism and intellectual violence.
This is exactly the point where I really needed James Baldwin. Baldwin knew how to deconstruct stories. He helped me in connecting the story of a liberated slave in its own nation, Haiti, and the story of the modern United States of America and its own painful and bloody legacy of slavery. I could connect the dots.
I looked to the films of Haile Gerima. Of Charles Burnett. These were my elders when I was a youth.
Baldwin gave me a voice, gave me the words, gave me the rhetoric. All I knew through instinct or through experience, Baldwin gave it a name and a shape. I had all the intellectual weapons I needed.
For sure, we will have strong winds against us. The present time of discord and confusion is an unavoidable element. I am not naive to think that the road ahead will be easy or that the attacks will not be at time vicious. My commitment to make sure that this film will not be buried or sidelined is uncompromising.
We are in it for the long run. Whatever time and effort it takes.
Raoul Peck
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO
Directed by: Raoul Peck
©: Velvet Film Inc, Velvet Film S.A.S., Artémis Productions, Closeup Films, Arte France Cinéma, RTS, RTBF
A co-production of: Velvet Film Inc., Velvet Film S.A.S., Artémis Productions, Close up Films, Arte France Cinéma, RTS, RTBF, Shelter Prod., Independent Television Service (ITVS)
Presented by: Velvet Film Inc., Velvet Film (France), Artémis Productions, Close up Films, Arte France Cinéma, Independent Lens
In co-production with: Radio Télévision Suisse, RTBF (Télévision Belge), Shelter Prod., Le Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée, MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Sundance Institute Documentary Program, National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), ANGOA PROCIREP – Société des Producteurs, Taxshelter.be, ING, Tax Shelter Incentive of the Federal Government of Belgium
With the support of: Cinéforom, Loterie Romande
Presented in association with the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), with funding provided by the: Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)
Foreign Sales Representative: Wide House
Produced by: Rémi Grellety, Raoul Peck, Hébert Peck
Co-produced by: Patrick Quinet, Joëlle Bertossa, Gloria Karefa-Smart
With the full support and collaboration of the James Baldwin Estate: Eileen Ahearn
Production Manager: Desirée Jellerette
Post-production Manager: Julien Melebeck
Consulting Producer: Audrey Rosenberg
Archival Research: Marie-Hélène Barberis, Nolwenn Gouault
Additional Archival Footage Research: Prudence Arndt
James Baldwin material compiled and edited by: Raoul Peck
Written by/Text by: James Baldwin
Directors of Photography: Henry Adebonojo, Bill Ross, Turner Ross
Digital Imaging Technician: Trevor Cohen
Grip: John Guillen
Graphics: Michel Blustein
Animation: Michel Blustein
Edited by: Alexandra Strauss
Consulting Editor: Sam Pollard
Make-up: Jacen Bowman
Music Composed by/Original Score by: Alexei Aïgui
Music Performed by: Ensemble 4’33
Sound Design: Valerie Le Docte, David Gillain
Sound: Sergio Da Costa
With the voice of: Samuel L. Jackson
USA-France-Belgium-Switzerland 2016©
94 mins
Digital
TEAR THIS BUILDING DOWN: JAMES BALDWIN ON FILM
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Mon 21 Oct 20:30; Fri 22 Nov 18:10 (+ intro)
If Beale Street Could Talk
Tue 22 Oct 14:30; Fri 22 Nov 20:40; Sat 30 Nov 17:50
I Heard It through the Grapevine
Thu 24 Oct 20:40; Sun 3 Nov 13:30
A Raisin in the Sun
Sat 26 Oct 15:30; Sat 9 Nov 18:10; Thu 28 Nov 20:30
I Am Not Your Negro
Sat 26 Oct 20:35; Sat 9 Nov 15:30; Thu 21 Nov 18:30
Color Adjustment
Fri 1 Nov 20:55; Mon 4 Nov 18:10
James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket
Fri 8 Nov 18:15; Mon 18 Nov 20:35
With thanks to
Special thanks to the African Odysseys steering committee, whose support has enabled audiences to enjoy 17 years of Black film programming at BFI Southbank
HIDDEN TRUTHS: JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY
Seniors’ Free Talk: The Quiet Mutiny + intro and Q&A with author Anthony Hayward
Mon 28 Oct 11:45
Seniors’ Free Matinee: The Last Day + intro with author Anthony Hayward
Mon 28 Oct 14:00
The Pilger Effect
Mon 28 Oct 18:15
The War You Don’t See
Mon 28 Oct 20:35; Sat 16 Nov 18:10
Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy + Palestine Is Still the Issue
Sat 2 Nov 15:00
The Golden Dream La Jaula De Oro
Tue 5 Nov 20:45; Thu 14 Nov 18:10; Sun 24 Nov 15:30
Lousy Little Sixpence + Utopia
Sun 10 Nov 14:50
Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia + Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror
Mon 18 Nov 18:10
Burp! Pepsi v Coke in the Ice Cold War + Flying the Flag: Arming the World
Sat 23 Nov 17:45
The Coming War on China
Sat 23 Nov 20:10; Fri 29 Nov 18:15
The Ballymurphy Precedent
Tue 26 Nov 18:10 (+ intro by director Callum Macrae); Sat 30 Nov 12:20
The documentaries in this season contain distressing scenes of both violence and racism related to the events they cover
With thanks to
John Pilger, Jane Hill, Sam Pilger, Christopher Hird, Matt Hird, David Boardman, Marcus Prince
Programme texts compiled by John Pilger, Jane Hill, Sam Pilger, Christopher Hird, Matt Hird, David Boardman, Maggi Hurt and David Somerset
Selections from Hidden Truths can be found on BFI Player
For more information about John Pilger’s films go to johnpilger.com
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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