The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.

Those were the words of the prophetic James Baldwin from the documentary I Am Not Your Negro.

And you're listening to Code Switch. I'm Shrine Marisol Maraji.

And I'm Jean Demby and this week we are talking about documentaries.

In particular, the documentaries that are up for Oscars at the end of the month before this year's Shrine,

only three black directors had ever been nominated for the best feature documentary of the Oscars ever.

That is bananas.

Yeah, Jean, that seems crazy to me. But this year, it's different.

The category is dominated by black directors. There's Raoul Peck for I Am Not Your Negro,

the James Baldwin documentary. After the break, we're going to talk with one of the people who helped get that made.

That's right. Edelman, who you might remember we talked to him last summer.

He was nominated for his intense eight-hour documentary, OJ Made in America.

One day everybody's going to know everything that you've done, man.

Roger Ross Williams got the nod for Life Animated, the only one of the four that doesn't deal directly with Race in America.

It's the story of an autistic child trying to find his voice through Disney movies.

I've been scared my whole life of growing up. Peter Pan doesn't want to grow up because when you grow up,

you lose all your magical childhood times.

And finally, it would do Verne for 13th, which is about mass incarceration in the United States.

A little country with 5% of the world's population having 25% of the world's prisoners,

one out of four, one out of four human beings with their hands on bars shackle.

That's Van Jones. Most of you probably know him from CNN. He's interviewed in 13th.

She incorrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't even the first black woman directed to have a documentary nominated for Oscar?

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