Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris + Baldwin’s Nigger

Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris
Terence Dixon, UK/France, 1971, digital projection, 31m
An extremely rare film document photographed by Jack Hazan (Rude Boy, A Bigger Splash) in several symbolic locations, including the Place de la Bastille. As Hazan recounts: “Things don’t go to plan for him and the film crew when a couple of young black Vietnam draft dodgers impose themselves on the American. Baldwin wrestles with being a role model to the black youths, denouncing Western colonialism and crimes against African Americans while at the same time demonstrating his mastery and understanding of the culture he supposedly despises.”

Baldwin’s Nigger
Horace Ové, UK, 1968, 16mm, 48min
James Baldwin, alongside Dick Gregory, speaks and responds to questions at the West Indian Student Centre in London about race and identity in America as he draws correspondences between the situation in the U.S. and the UK.

Followed by a post-film discussion with:

Sukhdev Sandhu – An Associate Professor at New York University. His books include Night Haunts: A Journey Through The London Night (winner of 2008 DH Lawrence International Prize For Travel Writing). He makes radio documentaries for the BBC, runs the Texte und Tone publishing imprint, and has written for the London Review of Books, Suddeutsche Zeitung, The Wire, Sight and Sound, New York, The Guardian, and The Times Literary Supplement.

Charles Hobson – An acclaimed producer, whose four-decade career as included Harlem in Montmarte, (Arte, PBS), Porgy and Bess: An American Voice, (PBS) Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant (FOX), Jump Street: The History of Black Music (PBS), and Negroes with Guns (PBS). His awards include an Emmy, a Fulbright (Germany), The Japan Prize (Special Citation), and CINE “Golden Eagle”. Hobson has taught at SUNY, NYU Tisch School for the Arts, Vassar.