'I Am Not Your Negro' Clip: Samuel L. Jackson Narrates James Baldwin in the Oscar-Nominated Documentary
After critically hailed debuts at last year’s Toronto and New York film festivals, Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro earned an Academy Award nomination last month. The movie begins its wider rollout on Friday, and to mark the occasion, we have an exclusive clip above.
Related: Oscars 2017: The Complete List of Academy Award Nominees
In the above scene, moviegoers can get a taste of the piercing rhetoric of I Am Not Your Negro’s subject: James Baldwin, the late novelist, essayist, and civil-rights activist, whose powerful writing about race in America is the focus of the film. The above clip details the lengths to which a black man had to go to hide a relationship with a white woman, circumstances that ultimately doomed any connection. Baldwin’s prose is used as the narrative backbone of Peck’s documentary, with Samuel L. Jackson reading the writer’s words in a low voice that conveys both fury and sorrow.
Featuring an immense amount of archival footage of both Baldwin and the tumultuous events of the 1960s and 1970s, I Am Not Your Negro has already taken up residence on many critics’ best-of-2016 lists. You can check out our exclusive clip above and see the film in theaters beginning Feb. 3.
Watch the trailer for the movie:
