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.
Directed by Marlon Riggs • 1990 • United States
This exploration of Black gay male desires and dreams starts with an affectionate, humorous confessional and moves on to a wish for empowerment and incorporation.
Directed by Marlon Riggs • 1991 • United States
Marlon Riggs’s experimental music video politicizes the homoeroticism of African American men. With images—sensual, sexual, and defiant—and words intended to provoke, ANTHEM reasserts the “self-evident right” to life and liberty in an era of pervas...
Directed by Marlon Riggs • 1992 • United States
Following his groundbreaking study of anti-Black stereotypes ETHNIC NOTIONS, Marlon Riggs turned his attention to the racial implications of America’s favorite addiction: television watching. COLOR ADJUSTMENT traces forty years of race relations th...
