Tongues Untied

Marlon T. Riggs’s landmark 1989 documentary on Black gay life uses poetry, personal testimony, rap, and performance 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 divas,” 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. Winner of the Los Angeles Film Critics Award, and Best Documentary prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

“Tongues Untied” will screen together with Marlon Riggs’ short experimental film “Anthem” (USA, 1991, 9′).