Following the call of the International Literature Festival Berlin berlin (ilb) we are pleased to join the worldwide screenings of Raoul Peck’s award-winning film I Am Not Your Negro to celebrate the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948.

Based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript for a novel entitled Remember This House, Peck’s documentary traces the chronology and persistence of racism in US society from 1890 to 2014. Apart from including striking footage of James Baldwin eloquently speaking, the film weaves the lives of three of the author’s friends from the civil rights movement who were all assassinated in the 1960s – human rights lawyer Medgar Evers (1963), Muslim minister and civil rights activist Malcolm X (1965) and Baptist pastor and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. (1968) – into a panorama of racism and resistance.

Screening the film is intended to emphasise that we are far from having established the equality of all people that the Declaration of Human Rights upholds, and that it is our responsibility to strive for a deeper understanding of the history of colonisation and slavery and its lasting effects.

Register to attend here

James Baldwin – Photo by Dan Budnick

France, USA, Switzerland, Belgium 2016; 95 mins. English. Directed by Raoul Peck. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson.

Please note that the online screening arranged by the Goethe-Institut London can only be viewed in the UK.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.

This event has been made possible with the kind support of Altitude Distribution.