James Baldwin Centennial Programing
Film Forum
Manhattan, NYC
Through Jan. 25,2024
A hundred years of James Baldwin and, if we’re lucky, a hundred years more.
I went to Film Forum, the best theater in NYC (if you don’t know, now you know; you’re welcome)„ to watch Baldwin Abroad, a wonderful program of three interview-style short films, each with its own angle of approach. Afterwards I was filled with a feeling not unakin to the sensation of leaving off a very good, old friend after a long chat over coffee.
Though Baldwin would undoubtedly prefer his legacy to be enshrined in the pages bound to the spines of his books, it’s far from a wonder as to why he was so often chosen as the subject of film, six of which are programmed at Film Forum this month to mark the centennial of his birth.
Baldwin as visual subject is almost as stunning as he is in the written medium. He moves across the screen with a quickness, body still and relaxed until the moment he has made up his mind to do something, belying the intellectual rigor that is always on display in his writing and speech.
There’s a moment from the beginning of Sedat Pakay’s Baldwin: From Another Place where we find Baldwin going about his morning — waking from sleep, futzing with his blankets, dressing enough to have a cigarette. It’s all done with knowing side-glances toward the camera, as if to tell us that he’s both acting and refusing to act. Always there’s a magnanimity to Baldwin’s gestures; his grace is not high in itself nor are his moments of humility forced.
The third film in the line-up, Baldwin’s N*****r, has us seeing Baldwin in the mode many of us would be most used to, all fire and wit, delivering a singular address all on his own, uninterrupted and brashly political. The Baldwin we see here is not the artist, not the clever, knowing creative of From Another Place, but a voice of his people, his movement, his thought. It is the Baldwin that lovingly duked it out with Nikki Giovanni on the tougher, angrier questions of political radicalism and liberation. It’s a pleasure to see, truly, but it comes with few surprises. Baldwin’s eloquence and powerful personality are why we’re all here to see these pieces in the first place. We want to spend time with him, get to know him better than we already do.
Thus the centerpiece and high-point of the program had to be Terence Dixon’s wonderfully disastrous documentary Meeting The Man: James Baldwin in Paris. It’s no secret to any Baldwin fan that the controversy surrounding his leaving the U.S. for Europe is one of the more difficult circles of his person to square. The question is often brought up of validity of one’s politics if one is going to simply abscond from the situation one holds opinions of. Baldwin’s peers asked this of him and latter-day critics get pages and pages out of it. His answer is generally straightforward and one that anyone can sympathize with — something along the lines of, “I cannot write books if everyone around me is dying and I myself might die along with them.”
The misunderstanding here for much of his white audience at the time was that Baldwin would rather be considered an artist over an activist. This is the misunderstanding that gets director Terence Dixon told to “Shut the hell up!” during the filming of Meeting The Man.
This piece, without spoiling too much, is of particular value principally on account of how naked the Baldwin we’re presented with is. He is angry, tired, frustrated, increasingly drunk, cantankerous. In a final gesture that includes Dixon surrendering control of the movie totally over to Baldwin and an expat student who interrupted shooting, Baldwin is exuberant, jubilant, wise, and teary-eyed with love for his strangely fortunate position.
With two weeks to fill, the other films programmed for Film Forum’s celebration of Baldwin’s life are I Am Not Your Negro, The Price of the Ticket, and a new restoration of I Heard It Through the Grapevine. Check every one of them out if you can. They’re all masterpieces.
