Filmmakers to attend Merced showing of James Baldwin documentary

The final offering in this year’s UC Merced Human Rights Film Series is set to bring two of the filmmakers to town.

A reception for “James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket” is 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26, at Merced Multicultural Arts Center, 645 W. Main St. The film begins at 7 p.m.

Filmmakers Karen Thorsen and David K. Dempsey are scheduled to take part in the reception. Their documentary covers the life, works and beliefs of the writer and civil rights activist –what it is to be born black, impoverished, gifted and gay in a world that has yet to understand that “all men are brothers,” according to a news release.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1990, according to its website, and has played in more than 50 festivals.

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 stepfather, the film’s website says.

“I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart,” he says in the film. “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.”

As an adult, he became a prolific writer, publishing perhaps his best-known work in the 1950s and ’60s. Baldwin moved from Paris to New York to Istanbul, writing two books of essays, “Notes of a Native Son” in 1955 and “Nobody Knows My Name” in 1961, as well as two novels, “Giovanni’s Room” in 1956 and “Another Country” in 1962.

The essays explore racial tension with honesty; the novels dealt with taboo themes (homosexuality and interracial relationships). Baldwin died in 1987.

Thorsen is an award-winning filmmaker and writer who also worked as an editor for publisher Simon & Schuster, a journalist for Life magazine and a foreign correspondent for Time magazine.

Dempsey too has won awards for his writing and films. He now writes, produces, shoots and edits.

The film’s third maker, William Miles, died in 2013.

The reception and film are free and open to the public. For more on the reception, call organizers at 209-658-9481 or email hrfilm@ucmerced.edu. More at jamesbaldwinproject.org.

This story was originally published February 25, 2016 at 3:07 PM with the headline "Filmmakers to attend Merced showing of James Baldwin documentary."