The seminal documentary on Black gay life, Emmy Award-winning director Marlon T. Riggs’ 1989 “Tongues Untied” uses poetry, personal testimony, rap and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others), to describe the homophobia and racism that confront Black gay men. The film was embraced by black gay audiences for its authentic representation of style, and culture, as well its fierce response to oppression. It opened up opportunities for dialogue among and across communities. It has been lauded by critics for its vision and its bold aesthetic advances, and vilified by anti-gay forces who used it to condemn government funding of the arts. It was even denounced from the floor of Congress. Winner of Best Documentary Film at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Marlon Riggs
Marlon Riggs was a black gay writer, filmmaker and social activist. He was born in Fort Worth, Texas to a military family on February 3, 1957, and spent his childhood at various military posts. Riggs graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1978, returned to Texas for a few years to work in television, then attended the University of California, Berkeley for a master’s degree in journalism in 1981. He then worked for several years in film under various directors until he began directing and producing his own documentaries, all incisive social commentaries on black identity and the role of African Americans in the United States. He died on April 5, 1994 of an AIDS-related illness before the completion of his final film, “Black Is… Black Ain’t”.
