It was 1986 when Albert Maysles and I began collaborating on a film project with James Baldwin. Our goal was a cinéma-verité film about the writing of Baldwin’s next book. Then, in December, 1987, James Baldwin died. A cinéma-verité film was no longer possible – but the need for a film on Baldwin suddenly took on new importance. With Al Maysles’ blessing, I formed a non-profit production entity (Nobody Knows Productions). The first event that we filmed was James Baldwin’s funeral; funded with my own savings, it gave me credibility as a filmmaker – and allowed me to begin raising funds elsewhere. I then enlisted the help of historical filmmaker/archival master Bill Miles, and, gradually, we became a team: Co-Pro ducer/Co-Writer Douglas Dempsey; Associate Producers Joy Birdsong and Joe Wood. Then came twelve months of research and six weeks of production (with Cinematographer Don Lenzer and Sound Recordist Peter Miller): in Istanbul, the South of France, Harlem, Connecticut and North Carolina … all places where Baldwin chose to live and work. Then, finally (with Editors Steven Olswang and Sandra Guthrie), we spent eight intense months combining our original material with the wealth of archival footage, audio recordings and still photographs which we’d unearthed in over nine different countries.

I’m extremely proud of all we accomplished: a film which tells Baldwin’s tale and spreads his message of brotherhood, in his own words, without any narration; a film which, like Baldwin’s writings, has now been translated, screened and broadcast in countries all over the world. The whole experience was a privilege. I’ve often said that during the making of Baldwin, I felt like a conduit … for something far greater than anything I could do or say on my own. Somewhere back in post-production, one of our editors said, “I’ve only been on this project two weeks, and already Bald win has changed my life.” He certainly changed mine. After years as a so-called idealist, after years as a writer on the fringes of film, I met Jimmy – and everything meshed. Suddenly I had the courage to take the next step. We all did. Jimmy does that to people. Here was someone lucid, honest, constant, saying the things we felt but never really said. Here was someone who lived what he believed, someone tough-minded enough to say not that the world would change, but that it could change … if we’d just make the effort. And he was real: excessive, exuberant, frustrated, torn — With the guts to insist that we really are brothers, that love is not an indulgence, it’s an imperative. As he says on camera, near the end of his life and near the end of this film:

The day will come when you will trust you more than you do now, and you will trust me more than you do now. And we can trust each other. I do believe, I really do believe in the New Jerusalem, I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous – and people are not yet willing to pay it.

Although he spent a great deal of his life abroad, James Baldwin always remained a quintessentially American writer. Whether he was working in Paris or Istanbul, he never ceased to reflect on his experience as a black man in white America. In numerous essays, novels, plays, and public speeches, the eloquent voice of James Baldwin spoke of the pain and struggle of black Americans and the saving power of brotherhood.

James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. The oldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty, developing a troubled relationship with his strict, religious father. As a child, he cast about for a way to escape his circumstances. As he recalls, “I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn’t know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use.” By the time he was fourteen, Baldwin was spending much of his time in libraries and had found his passion for writing.

During this early part of his life, he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a preacher. Of those teen years, Baldwin recalled, “Those three years in the pulpit — I didn’t realize it then — that is what turned me into a writer, really, dealing with all that anguish and that despair and that beauty.” Many have noted the strong influence of the language of the church on Baldwin’s style, its cadences and tone. Eager to move on, Baldwin knew that if he left the pulpit he must also leave home, so at eighteen he took a job working for the New Jersey railroad.

After working for a short while with the railroad, Baldwin moved to Greenwich Village, where he came into contact with the well-known writer Richard Wright. Baldwin worked for a number of years as a freelance writer, working primarily on book reviews. Though Baldwin had not yet finished a novel, Wright helped to secure him a grant with which he could support himself as a writer in Paris. So, in 1948 Baldwin left for Paris, where he would find enough distance from the American society he grew up in to write about it.

After writing a number of pieces that were published in various magazines, Baldwin went to Switzerland to finish his first novel. Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953, was an autobiographical work about growing up in Harlem. The passion and depth with which he described the struggles of black Americans was unlike anything that had been written. Though not instantly recognized as such, Go Tell It on the Mountain has long been considered an American classic. Throughout the rest of the decade, Baldwin moved from Paris to New York to Istanbul, writing Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Giovanni’s Room (1956). Dealing with taboo themes in both books (interracial relationships and homosexuality, respectively), Baldwin was creating socially relevant and psychologically penetrating literature.

Being abroad gave Baldwin a perspective on his life and a solitary freedom to pursue his craft. “Once you find yourself in another civilization,” he notes, “you’re forced to examine your own.” In a sense, Baldwin’s travels brought him even closer to the social concerns of contemporary America. In the early 1960s, overwhelmed with a responsibility to the times, Baldwin returned to take part in the civil rights movement. Traveling throughout the South, he began work on an explosive work about black identity and the state of racial struggle, The Fire Next Time (1963). For many, Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time were an early and primary voice in the civil rights movement. Though at times criticized for his pacifist stance, Baldwin remained throughout the 1960s an important figure in that struggle.

After the assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, Baldwin returned to France where he worked on a book about the disillusionment of the times, If Beale Street Could Talk (1974). Many responded to the harsh tone of If Beale Street Could Talk with accusations of bitterness. But, even if Baldwin had encapsulated much of the anger of the times in his book, he always remained a constant advocate for universal love and brotherhood. During the last ten years of his life, Baldwin produced a number of important works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and turned to teaching as a new way of connecting with the young. By his death in 1987, James Baldwin had become one of the most important and vocal advocates for equality. From Go Tell It on the Mountain to The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985), James Baldwin created works of literary beauty and depth that will remain essential parts of the American canon.