James Baldwin: the Price of the Ticket

The life, work and ideas of the black American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin are central to this documentary. What is it like to be black, impoverished, homosexual and talented in a world that has not yet understood that Baldwin tells about this in his own words, no voice-over was added to the film.
Karen Thorsen made use of rather unknown archive footage from various sources and countries. This yielded intimate interviews and conversations, sometimes giving an amazing 'cinema verité' view on the writer. Furthermore, the film contains a copious selection of original footage of Baldwin's funeral service, his houses on three different continents, and many interviews with friends, colleagues and critics: his brother David, his biographer David Leeming, the writers Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, William Styron, Ismael Reed and Yashar Kemal, painter Lucien Harpersberger and entertainer Bobby Short.