The James Baldwin Anthology

Description

The James Baldwin Anthology is a seventy five minute DVD consisting of internationally known writer James Baldwin’s historic speech at UC Berkeley in 1979, his answers in a dialog with Malcom X in the 60’s, and series of original mixed media images done by Claire Burch as a memorial after his death in 1987. Following this material is an additional Director’s Cut of half and hour which contains an interview with the late Professor Erskine Peters who was host to Jimmy at this time, and film of a session at Cody’s Bookstore in Berkeley, California where biographer David Lemming is reading from his Alfred Knopf biography of Jimmy and describing his sad and funny efforts to bring a close friend, the painter Beauford Delaney, from a psychiatric unit in France to Turkey where Jimmy was living at the time. Included in the DVD are unforgettable images of America’s racial unrest, other images of Baldwin himself, photos of many of the memorial mixed media images of Baldwin, and a series of sarcastic variations of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, as ordered by Jimmy in a dream shortly after his death. The images are part of an exhibit of images and quotations available to museums and libraries on request from Regent Press Berkeley. This material, collected into a book Remembering James Baldwin (which will also contain additional memoirs by well know writers and David Lemming’s touching recollection of Jimmy’s last weeks) will be available shortly from Regent Press.