endlessly fascinating. a film that also acts as a legit confrontation between subject and filmmaker, a thankfully unfiltered, honest, and ruthless, examination on the monstrous barriers that racism causes in every facet of a Black person’s life, and a display of the power of language. there are too many quotables to cite here, especially since I feel that would be reducing it down to a few sound bites (though “The world is held together by the love and ion of a few people”, and “Living constantly under the shadow of death grants you a certain freedom”...man). it’s 30 minutes of James Baldwin talking, you can’t go wrong with it. and the white filmmakers, what?! infuriating, idk how Baldwin stayed so level-headed and concise. clear condescension and ignorance on their part during that interrogation in the Bastille scene. it led to riveting footage, yet raises some questions also about what is ethical to film, or, what’s ethical to say to the subject of your film. a small part of me thinks they were maybe sorta trying to goad a response like that out of Baldwin, but that might be giving them too much credit there. it was coming from a place that wasn’t (perhaps) meant to be overtly vicious, but it was absolutely vicious nonetheless. and their refusal to understand or acknowledge the reality of the situation—but rather to force Baldwin to conform to their imagining of who he was—revealed a key truth Baldwin was saying all along: with whiteness, ignorance is possible. and through that ignorance, and refusal to act, the prisons of limited thought, and abundant fear, continue on.