Okay, let's dive in. We are about to really unpack
the work of a filmmaker who sees history, well,
not as something finished, but as this like active
force demanding our attention. We're focusing
today on Raoul Peck. I mean, this is somebody
who was a student in Berlin, drove a taxi in
New York City, and served as Haiti's Minister
of Culture. Yeah, all before creating some of
the most powerful political films out there.
It's quite the background. It absolutely is.
And for anyone looking for, you know, a way into
understanding the key figures in modern political
cinema, Peck is essential. Our mission here is
to pull together a pretty rich set of sources,
sources covering his political life, which was
very principled, his own production company,
Velvet Film. And of course, these major works
like Lumumba, I Am Not Your Negro, Exterminate
All the Brutes. And the goal is to see how his
own life story, which is so fragmented geographically.
Haiti, Congo, Europe. the U .S. Exactly. How
that doesn't just influence his art, but it's
like the very fabric of it. Yeah, it is the raw
material. It's built from that experience. And
what comes through really clearly from the sources
is that Peck is deeply politically engaged. He's
just not interested in finding some sort of neutral
middle ground. No, not at all. He uses history,
politics, very personal memories to tackle these
big societal problems. And he's always making
that link, isn't he? connecting historical suffering
to what's happening right now. So the key thing
I think for you, the listener, to grasp right
at the start is this. Peck's films are a direct
challenge. They challenge the power structures
that usually control who gets to tell the story.
Because he lived under Duvalier in Haiti, he
saw the fragility of post -colonial Congo firsthand,
then studied capitalism in Europe. His work is
designed to expose those connections between
historical violence and how wealth is distributed
today. So he's not just showing history, he's
sort of... Arguing with it. Exactly. Arguing
with it, using his own global life as the evidence.
Okay, so let's start at the beginning then. Because
to really get the global reach of his films,
you also have to map out his life journey. Born
in Port -au -Prince, Haiti, 1953. And his early
life was just dominated by the political situation
there. Totally shaped by it. The Duvalier dictatorship
arrives. And when Peck is just eight years old,
1961, his family flees. They had to get out.
Yeah. But they didn't just go next door. They
ended up joining his father in what was then
Leopoldville, soon to be Kinshasa in the Congo,
the DRC. Which had just gained independence.
Lost a very volatile time. And this part is so
crucial, often maybe skipped over. He wasn't
just a Haitian kid in exile. He spent... 24 years
growing up in the Congo. 24 years. Think about
that. His father was an agronomist working for
the U .N., the FAO, UNESCO. Part of that international
effort after independence. Right. Teaching agriculture,
helping set up infrastructure after the Belgians
left so abruptly. So Peck is watching literally
a nation try to build itself. And, well. struggling
immensely in the process. He's immersed in it.
His father's part of the UN mission, trying to
build structures. His mother, Giselle, she worked
as an aide, a secretary for mayors in Kinshasa
for years. So he's seeing not just the culture,
but the actual messy bureaucracy of a post -colonial
state up close. You get this incredible tension
then, the trauma of Haiti's dictatorship hanging
over him. But he's living in Kinshasa, which
was this hub, right? International aid, political...
ideals floating around. Yeah, but also chaos.
And this is just months after Patrice Lumumba
was assassinated. That environment had to politicize
him from day one. Oh, absolutely. It had to.
And his journey didn't stop there. His education
path is, well, surprisingly practical for someone
who ends up an artist. Schools in Kinshasa, then
Brooklyn. Brooklyn, New York. Then Orléans, France,
before finally settling on his main studies.
Which were, and this is fascinating, industrial
engineering and economics at Humboldt University
in Berlin. Wait. Economics. Before film school,
he's studying the mechanics of industry, the
flow of capital. Exactly. For someone with, you
know, artistic dreams, as the sources put it,
it seems like a detour. A massive one. But Peck
saw that European structural education as vile.
Non -negotiable. He actually said he had to educate
himself as much as possible before he could even
think about a film career back in Haiti or anywhere
else. He needed the tools. The analytical framework.
He needed economics to really pick apart the
global systems he saw causing so much damage
in Haiti in the DRC. That makes sense. He didn't
just want to tell stories. He wanted to build
a case. An evidenced argument. Precisely. Not
a casual observer, but an informed critic, someone
who understood the structures. Okay, so that
rigorous background sets up his transition in
the 80s, before he gets his film degree in 88
from the DFFB in Berlin. The German Film and
Television Academy. Right. He does some really
practical kind of ground -level jobs. Yeah, like
driving a taxi in New York City for a year. Which,
after studying global economics in Berlin, must
have been quite the experience. Talk about seeing
theory meet reality. Poverty, racism, inequality
right there in the rearview mirror. And he was
also working as a journalist and a photographer
from about 1980 to 85. Right. So taxi driver,
journalist, photographer. These jobs put him
right in contact with people, training his eye,
you know, to see social reality directly. Practical
extensions of his studies. And he secured his
independence early. He founded his own production
company, Velvet Film, in Germany in 1986 while
still studying film. Still a student. That tells
you everything about his intention. He knew he
needed control. Yeah. And Velvet Film became
the engine. It produced or co -produced pretty
much everything he did afterwards. Docs, features,
TV. He knew early on if you want to tell difficult
stories, especially from a non -Western viewpoint,
you can't rely on the established studios. You've
got to build it yourself. You have to build your
own machine. And he didn't just build it for
himself. He invested back home in Haiti. founding
the Eldorado Forum in Port -au -Prince in 95.
Right, specifically to help local Haitian artists,
to support their creativity, give them resources.
He's an infrastructure builder, trying to make
sure the next generation had the local support
he had to find internationally. And that sense
of responsibility, building infrastructure, it
leads directly into the next really unique phase
of his life, when he actually stopped filming
politics for a bit. And started doing politics.
Exactly. Becoming Haiti's Minister of Culture,
that's a major shift. March 96 to October 97,
under Prime Minister Rosny Smarth. Short tenure.
But wow. A very principled decision, you know,
to step away from filmmaking and into the actual
administration of this fragile nation trying
to recover from dictatorship. But it didn't last
long because his principles, it seems, were more
important than staying in power. Completely.
He resigned. Along with the prime minister and
five other ministers, it was a direct protest
against Presidents Prival and Aristide. Not a
quiet exit. A clean break based on ethics. Yeah,
he wasn't going to compromise on that. And it
was such a defining moment. He wrote a whole
book about it. Monsieur le ministre. Jusqu 'au
bout de la patience. Mr. Minister. Yeah. To the
end of patience. Right. And reviews of the book
called it a portrait of a formidable democratic
movement. He didn't just quit. He documented
that struggle for real, uncorrupted democracy.
And you can see that same uncompromising political
drive in his very early films, even before he
officially graduated film school. Oh, yeah. His
first short in 1982, The Cuba Trago Encantar.
It was about a Cuban music group visiting West
Berlin for a peace concert. Political right away.
Then lubed in 83, focusing on protests. during
Reagan's visit to Berlin, directly engaging with
Cold War tensions. And Merry Christmas, Deutschland
in 84. A report about, like, history lessons
taught on Christmas Day in Helmut Kohl's Germany.
He was already finding politics in the everyday.
Using concerts, street protests, even Christmas
lessons to show the political currents underneath.
That early work, that direct commentary, it really
set him up for returning to Haitian themes in
his features. His first feature film, Haitian
Corner, 1987, shot while he was still a student.
And it deals directly with the legacy of Duvalius
Terror. Yeah, it follows a Haitian man in exile
in New York. He'd been tortured by the Taunus
Makuts. Duvalier's secret police. Notorious.
Right, and the whole film hinges on this moment
where he runs into his former torturer. Does
he seek revenge or find a way to forgive? So
not a simple revenge plot. It's about the moral
weight of trauma. Exactly. Interrogating how
that violence continues to define a survivor's
life, even in exile. That became his style. Big
political violence filtered through intimate
moral choices. He followed that with The Man
by the Shore in 1993, L 'Homme Siliqué. Which
was huge, a fictional story, but it traces the
very start of Duvalerism, the beginning of the
terror, all seen through the eyes of an eight
-year -old girl, Sarah. innocent eyes watching
this darkness descend. And critically, this film
was a big deal. Nominated for the Palme d 'Or
at Cannes, that put him on the global map. And
it was the first Haitian film released in U .S.
theaters. Yeah, which was massive for representation.
It showed that Haiti's complex, difficult history
could actually reach a mainstream Western audience.
So this mix of personal stories and sharp political
insight started getting him recognition beyond
festivals. Human Rights Watch gave him the Nestor
Almendros Prize in 94. and the Irene Diamond
Award in 2000. both for his human rights work
through film. He established himself early as
this really essential, uncompromising voice.
And that uncompromising stance was about to be
seriously tested when he decided to tackle the
story of Patrice Lumumba. Oh, the Lumumba Project.
Yeah, that's a perfect example of the kind of
resistance he faced. The structural barriers
in funding these kinds of stories. Totally. He
really struggled at first to get a fiction film
about Lumumba off the ground. Lumumba, you know,
the father of Congo's independence. national
hero but the money people weren't interested
the investors mostly european and american they
wanted a story centered on a european character
the usual suspects the diplomat the journalist
white witness someone relatable for the perceived
audience Exactly. They wanted to make the history,
you know, digestible, palatable. But Peck was
absolutely set on telling it from Lumumba's perspective.
A full, complex portrait of the Black hero. And
refusing to compromise meant... Years of struggle,
financial headaches. Many filmmakers just couldn't
have sustained that fight. So how did he get
around it? He took a different route first. He
went personal, used his own background, his own
production company, and made a documentary. Lumumba.
Death of a prophet in 1991. Right. And he stressed
how personal this was. He found old family photos,
8mm films his own dad shot when they were living
in the Congo during that exact period. Wow. So
the documentary wasn't just history, it was...
Reclaiming his own past, too. Yeah, it was grounding
the story in his lived experience. He said the
documentary and the later feature film were really
two different things for him. The doc being about
his personal connection to the Congo. And making
the documentary first maybe helped build the
case for the feature. It absolutely provided
the groundwork, the credibility. So then finally,
in 2000, he could make the feature film Lumumba,
designed to be more accessible, telling that
pivotal story around Congolese independence in
1960. And the sources say it unveiled unwritten
controversial history. History often swept under
the rug in Western accounts. Definitely. And
it worked. Won Best Feature at two big African
film festivals. Got great reviews. It was the
full -on confrontation with Lumumba's story that
he'd wanted all along. The success of Lumumba
must have opened some doors. It led to an HBO
commission, right? Tackling another huge African
tragedy. Yeah, the Rwandan genocide. In 2005,
HBO commissioned... Sometimes in April. An English
language TV movie starring Idris Elba focusing
on the 1994 massacre. 800 ,000 people killed.
That's taking on an incredibly heavy, sensitive
subject with a major American studio. Huge. And
this is where Peck's insistence on ethical filmmaking
really came to the fore. He laid down conditions
to HBO that he later said were basically unacceptable
by industry standards. Okay, what were these
demands? First, the story had to be told entirely
from the Rwandan point of view. No Western character
as the audience's way in. Right. Second, he insisted
on shooting the entire film in Rwanda. On location,
where the genocide happened. That must have been
incredibly difficult logistically, emotionally.
Immense challenges. Security, insurance, the
sensitivity of filming recent trauma on site.
But he wouldn't budge. And HBO. Agreed. Amazingly,
yeah. They accepted all his conditions. His commitment
to getting it right was intense. He studied reports,
testimonies. He said every single line is authentic
and based on facts. Not historical fiction. But
dramatized fact. Exactly. And the premiere itself
showed that commitment. It wasn't in L .A. or
New York. The Rwandan people saw it first in
the arena in Kigali. You prioritize the community
affected. Above everything else. And that dedication
was recognized. It won TV program of the year
at the AFI Awards, best film at Durban. It proved
that sticking to your principles, demanding authenticity
doesn't kill a project. It can make it more powerful.
So after these deep dives into African history,
Peck takes that same rigorous, non -compromising
approach and turns it towards these big global
ideologies, starting with race. in America. Which
leads us to, I mean, what has to be one of the
most important documentaries of the last decade,
I Am Not Your Negro from 2016. Based on James
Baldwin's unfinished book, Remember This House.
Right. Baldwin's project was going to be about
his friends, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm
X, Medgar Evers, their lives, their assassinations.
And just getting the rights took Peck. How long?
About 10 years. Just to get permission to use
Baldwin's estate, his letters, his words. Think
about that dedication. Incredible patience. And
the film itself, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson,
it's just masterfully constructed. It uses Baldwin's
actual words from letters, speeches, the manuscript
woven with archival footage. It charts the history
of racism, the constant oppression of black Americans.
And the genius is using Baldwin's unfinished
work to say that this history is also unfinished.
Right. Exactly. It connects the 1960s. footage
directly to images from today, showing how Baldwin's
insights are just timeless, tragically relevant.
The critical response was huge. Universal acclaim,
like 99 % on Rotten Tomatoes, 96 on Metacritic,
Oscar nomination, won the Caesar, won an Emmy.
It really changed the game for how documentaries
can use archival, material, and powerful language
to interrogate history and power. But Pick doesn't
just stay on one topic. The very next year, 2017,
he pivots again intellectually. He makes the
young Karl Marx. Yeah, from Baldwin and American
race relations to the origins of the Communist
Manifesto, it seems like a big leap. But is it?
Well, the common thread is still there, isn't
it? Understanding how systems of power are built,
how exploitation gets theorized, justified. And
Peck himself said Marx was huge for him during
his own education in Berlin back in the 70s and
80s. Right. He said understanding Marx's analysis
was key to confronting the past and the present.
It connects back to his economics degree. But
filming the evolution of an idea, that sounds
tough. He said it was the hardest script he ever
worked on. Took 10 years with his screenwriter,
Pascal Bonitzer. How do you make the development
of political thought dramatic, cinematic, without
dumbing it down? Yeah, that's a challenge. And
the film makes a point of including the collaborators
often left out of the story. Jenny Marks, Carl's
wife, helping with the manifesto draft. Mary
Burns, Engel's partner, mediating their debates,
showing the whole intellectual ecosystem. That
structural critique then expands even further
in 2021 with the HBO series Exterminate All the
Brutes. A huge four -part documentary, won a
Peabody Award. And this one really digs into
the genocidal core of European colonialism. And
he's synthesizing multiple major academic works
here. Yeah, it's not just one source. He pulls
from Sven Lindquist's book Exterminate All the
Brutes, Roxanne Dunbar -Ortiz's An Indigenous
People's History of the United States, and Michelle
Rolfe Trio's crucial work, Silencing the past.
It's a scholarly foundation for a powerful argument.
And Peck narrates it himself, making it very
direct. His argument is intentionally provocative.
That white supremacy and the impulse to eliminate
the other weren't side effects of colonialism.
They were central to it. The ideological engine.
Leading to global exterminations. Exactly. He
calls it a story of survival and violence. Using
archival footage, new material, even animation
to depict things that couldn't be filmed. This
series feels like his most explicit statement
of philosophy. Yeah. That line from the trailer,
neutrality is not an option. The past has a future
we never expect. That really sums up his whole
approach, doesn't it? History isn't dead. It's
active. It shapes our future. And we should connect
this back to his early studies, too, the economics.
His critique isn't just political, it's financial.
Definitely. Back in 2001, he did a film for Arte
called Profit and Nothing But, part of a series
called La Bourse et la Vie. The Stock Market
and Life. Right. And his film focused specifically
on the devastating impact of predatory capitalism
on his home country, Haiti. So it all connects.
The trauma in Haiti, the struggles in Congo,
the critique of race in America, the roots of
Marxism, the violence of colonialism. It's all
part of one big analysis of global power structures.
It's one continuous, interconnected argument
unfolding across his entire career. Okay. So
we've talked a lot about the content, the politics.
Right. But how does he actually do it? Yes. How
does he weave all these complex threads? History,
politics, personal memory. into films that aren't
just academic essays. Yeah. The how is key. It's
his style. The sources point out that his films
often use the polish and like the structural
effectiveness of American cinema. They look good.
They're well paced. Right. They draw you in.
But then he combines that accessibility with
these really complex, nonlinear techniques. Like
a collage, you said. Exactly. He breaks up the
timeline, uses flashbacks, flash forwards, what
the sources call time overlay. So history feels
like it's happening right now, bleeding into
the present. Showing the legacy directly. And
the voiceover is crucial, too. It's always shifting.
Sometimes it's Peck himself, like in Exterminate.
Sometimes it's Baldwin's words in I Am Not Your
Negro. Sometimes it's another character or observer.
So it's never just one single authoritative voice
telling you what to think. Right. That multiplicity
avoids it becoming a lecture. It's this mixed
documentary footage. Animation, different voices,
fractured timelines that allows him to blend
the politics, the history, the poetry and the
deeply personal stuff organically. They're not
just watching. You're kind of piecing it together
with him. You're actively participating in understanding
this fragmented reality. And this whole complex
style serves a very clear purpose. He's been
blunt about it. Yeah. He's not primarily aiming
for entertainment. Not at all. He said he got
into film. Because of politics, because of content,
not because I wanted to make Hollywood films.
Which is pretty different from a lot of the film
industry. Yeah, he contracts his approach with
American cinema, which he says often claims that
its purpose is entertainment and aims to please
the audience, not so much to provoke. Peck wants
to provoke. He wants to change how you see history,
make you feel the cost of it, and crucially,
provoke a reaction, make you think critically.
That kind of intellectual filmmaking demands
really intense work. and the writing stage. He's
talked about how hard that is. Finding a writing
partner who gets it, who shares that philosophical
or political grounding, he said it's incredibly
difficult. Which makes his long collaboration
with Pascal Bonitzer on The Young Karl Marx even
more significant. Ten years. They needed that
time and that shared understanding to turn dense
theory into something dramatic and watchable.
And he continues these kinds of deep collaborations.
He's mentioned ongoing projects with the writer
Russell Banks. Who's a major figure himself.
Banks even wrote the preface for Peck's book
about his time as minister of culture. That shows
a deep intellectual trust. Choosing partners
who share that uncompromising political lens.
Absolutely. And Peck, I mean, he's still incredibly
productive after decades in the business. His
recent work keeps hitting these core themes.
Like Silver Dollar Road last year for Amazon.
About a black family fighting developers trying
to take their land. Right back to that intersection
of race, land and capitalist pressure, the personal
impact of systemic forces. And just this year,
2024, he premiered Ernest Cole, Lost and Found
at Cannes, about the South African photographer.
Bringing him back to Southern Africa, back to
post -colonial critique through the lens of art
and resistance. And he's got two huge documentary
projects in the works right now, both incredibly
timely and political. The first is about the
assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Morsi
in 2021. Which brings him right back to Haiti.
It's instability, the questions of power and
interference there. Full circle. And the second
one, which is maybe the most intriguing philosophically.
is Orwell, a documentary about George Orwell
for Neon. Orwell. Given Peck's focus on power,
truth, history, surveillance, applying his style
to Orwell seems potentially explosive. Yeah,
imagining Peck's collage technique tackling the
author of 1984, it promises a really potent look
at modern authoritarianism, information control.
Okay, so let's try to pull this all together.
If we synthesize everything we've looked at,
what's the main thread in Raoul Peck's career?
I think the core, the constant is this unwavering
commitment to telling history from the perspective
of those who usually don't get to tell it. The
oppressed, the marginalized. He's like a guide.
Using film to force us to confront uncomfortable
truths. Absolutely. Using nonlinear stories,
archival evidence, his own personal history to
just shatter our easy assumptions about how the
world works. And for you, the listener, his films
are this incredibly direct, deeply researched
way into understanding some of the most critical
moments and issues in modern global history.
Yeah. Whether it's Rwanda or Haiti under Duvalier
or race in America through Baldwin or even the
ideas of Karl Marx, he's always digging for the.
why. Why are things structured the way they are?
And it's often not comfortable to look at. He
makes it very clear with his statement. Neutrality
is not an option, especially when dealing with
systemic problems. Exactly. Which brings us to
that final thought. He's now turning his attention
to George Orwell, the ultimate writer about totalitarianism,
surveillance, the manipulation of truth. So the
question becomes, how will Peck with his unique
style and his fierce commitment to exposing power,
interpret Orwell for our time. What new parallels
might he draw between the dangers Orwell warned
about and, say, the systems of global capitalism
or digital surveillance today, that Orwell film?
It feels like it could be a major statement about
the future Pexies is heading towards. What history
is he going to force us to confront next?