Award winning documentary maker and BBC presenter Professor Kurt Barling is to introduce the first Talkies Communities Cinema night of 2018.

After the screening of ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ on Thursday January 4 at the Dugdale Centre, the audience will be invited to ask Professor Barling questions about the film’s subject matter.

‘I Am Not Your Negro’ is based on American Civil Rights activist James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript ‘Remember This House’, and connects past with present race issues in the United States.

The book and subsequent 2016 film directed by Raoul Peck explores the history of racism in the United States through Baldwin’s reminiscences of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

James Baldwin passed away in 1987 with only 30 pages of his manuscript completed.

Professor Kurt Barling started his career as a lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics.

In 1989 he worked for the BBC on the television channel’s news and current affairs programmes.

Subsequently he has earned a living as a documentary maker, and won the first Commission for Racial Equality reporter of the year award.

Professor Barling went to Hazelwood Junior school in Enfield in the 1970s, and then Southgate where he was Head Boy.

For further information about the showing of ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ visit Talkies Community Cinema at http://talkies.org.uk/event/i-am-not-your-negro.