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4

can’t rate this because baldwin — the smartest man to ever exist on this earth — deserves five and the filmmakers deserve next to nothing. this is almost like a comedy to me, hearing the white man get riled up because he can’t understand what james is talking about. that frustration of unknowing and ignorance perfectly captured by the director himself, whether this was meant to shame baldwin i don’t know, but it’s incredibly embarrassing for dixon.

“i am not at all what you think i am”

7

the majority of this short doc is met with so much conflict caused by the filmmakers, but then there is one scene where they are finally silenced, and baldwin gets to instead speak to a group of his readers. the setting is informal, with everyone lounging on a bed while baldwin sits across the room, almost like they are at a sleepover or preparing to be read to. one man tells baldwin that his novel, another country, is the first and last book he was able to complete. baldwin takes a moment to accept this before saying:

"i know from my own point of view, it was in a sense all for you. i mean, i know that i love…

Review by Desmond Thorne ★★★★½

I could watch James Baldwin talk and read the shit out of White filmmakers for hours. ❤️

19

Seriously do not know how or where Baldwin kept finding the patience to put up with the inanities of these white fools—and all the time, throughout his life. "He stopped being cooperative" — Jesus, help me. Some truly deranged foundations of thinking for the wounded blokes: that everyone's been in love (very few can stand it), that he's writing to change the mental landscapes of white people, that consequently the fiction is more "subversive" than the essays, that it's easier to dismiss THE FIRE NEXT TIME than ANOTHER COUNTRY because in the latter "you're faced with some very real human situations"—and on and on. You gotta wonder where the footage of him gradually refusing to talk to the crew is. A remarkable document — and totally irrespective of the authors's conscious design.

"You can't prove by me that everyone's been in love. If everybody's been in love, they'd treat their children differently. They'd treat each other differently."

Review by Tom Prideaux

Hugely embarrassing for the filmmakers; essential to the rest of us. Baldwin shines through their ignorance and delivers to the world a wonderful half-hour of his presence and wisdom. Very grateful to MUBI for this restoration.

"The world is held together, really it is held together by the love and the ion of a very few people. Otherwise of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself not to be."

10

Beautiful restoration of this doc.

Watched on Mubi.

Review by Angelica Jade Bastién🪼🌷 Liked

“He has a life to lose and you don’t!”

“I’m writing for people, baby.”

“Everyone you’re looking at is also you!”

How does one rate a film that amounts to both a narrow lens on a black genius and revelatory view on white discomfort with blackness? James Baldwin remains a transfixing, extremely talented legend that black artists and writers like myself keep tripping on the shadow of. White anger and white ignorance can’t hide from the light of Baldwin’s wry smile, beaming and cutting eyes. In conversations documented between Baldwin and young black folks who cut their teeth, so to speak, on his writing — “I know that I love you” — I couldn’t help but wonder how different the…

Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★★★★

“I mean, they're killing my friends.”

This featured the worst opening music. The white documentarian (Terence Dixon) failed to see who James Baldwin was and what he wanted to talk about. Baldwin rips them to shreds and gives them and us a brutal dose of reality.

Watched on: MUBI

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1

I've watched this several times now, and have recommended it multiple times in my MUBI ad reads but just realized I've never logged it on here.

It's an incredibly evocative portrait of James Baldwin. The slightly antagonistic relationship between him as the subject and the documentarians only really serves to illustrate the nuance with which he understood and wanted to articulate his experience of the world. It's one of the few cases where you see his brilliance not because of the documentary but through and in spite of it's failures.

Review by elif308 Liked

“the world is held together, really held together, by the love and ion of very few people”

8

This rediscovery by streaming provider MUBI is one of the most interesting films you can watch. On the surface, this is because of the fantastic political insights given by Baldwin, the subject of this short documentary. 

After all, this is a film of him speaking about his life as a writer in Paris, that is fascinating enough. Of course, it being Baldwin – one of the most important voices of recent history (recently immortalised in Peck’s superb I am Not Your Negro) – the insights provided are brilliant and the focus moves far beyond the initial scope. This second part, though, is where the genius lies (though genius is a strange term as it applies to the film rather than…

1

A devastating skewering of the contradiction between the white auteur and the black subject. A disaster of a documentary at the hands of the filmmakers, and because of that utterly essential.

What’s gonna happen, sooner or later, all the wretched of the earth, in one way or another, next Tuesday or next Wednesday, will destroy the cobblestones on which London and Rome and Paris are built. The world will change, because it has to change.