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Just finished this.

#AuthorAMonth #AAMJB

This book contains reviews and analyses of mostly films. Most of them I have not seen but now want to see! Birth of a Nation, The Defiant Ones, and many more from mid 20th century. When Baldwin gets to Guess Who‘s Coming to Dinner and The Exorcist, I can relate better bc I remember them from late 1960s - early 1970s. Insightful and in-depth!

#authoramonth2021 @Soubhiville

Critical essays on race as it relates to popular films of the day. I feel I would have gotten more out of this had I seen more of these films but even for the ones I hadn‘t seen, Baldwin‘s essays were impactful.
#AuthorAMonth

Baldwin taking a serious look at race in several classic films I‘ve never seen. Film buffs will get more out of this than I did. He hits hard on the pro-KKK film The Birth of the Nation, and works through In the Heat of the Night, Guess Whose Coming to Dinner, Billy Holiday etc. They all get his brutal version of the black perspective and they are all, of course, pretty awful from that perspective. What would he say about film today?

Read this before I watched the new doc I Am Not Your Negro and am so glad I did. This is my first Baldwin but definitely won't be my last. As someone who loves to read about film this was 👌🏽.