Directed by Marlon Riggs • 1989 • United States
Marlon Riggs’s landmark documentary uses poetry, personal testimony, rap, and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others) to describe the homophobia and racism faced by Black gay men. The stories are often devastating: the man refused entry to a gay bar because of his skin color; the college student left bleeding on the sidewalk after a hate crime; the loneliness and isolation of a drag queen. Yet they also powerfully affirm the Black gay male experience through protest marches, smoky bars, “snap diva,” and Vogue dancers. Made, in Riggs’s own words, to “shatter this nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” TONGUES UNTIED remains, three decades after its controversy-inciting release, as urgent and vital as ever.
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I Called Him Morgan
Directed by Kasper Collin • 2016 • Sweden, United States
Starring Lee Morgan, Helen Morgan, Wayne ShorterOn a snowy night in 1972, celebrated jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot to death by his common-law wife, Helen, at a club in New York City. The memory of the event still haunts those who rem...
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Dressed in Blue
Directed by Antonio Giménez Rico • 1983 • Spain
Starring Lorenzo Arana, René Amor, Francisco Pérez CobosThis landmark documentary explores the lives and loves of a group of six transgender women living in Madrid in the years following Spain’s transition to democracy. But more than that, it’s a ...
