• Tongues Untied
  • Tongues Untied
  • Dottie Gets Spanked
  • Decodings
  • Fireworks
  • Seascape


Tongues Untied

Marlon Riggs
United States, 1989
featuring

Essex Hemphill, Blackberri, Brian Freeman, Alan Miller,

Tongues Untied is about the silence that envelops the lives of Black gay men. This exhilarating work is a loquacious attempt to break free of the homophobia and racism that mute the possibilities for human fulfillment. Marlon Riggs creates a poetic pastiche that has the emotional uplift of gospel music and the sobering impact of reportage. The words of gay poets, personal testimony, rap tableaux, dramatic sequences, and archival footage are woven together with a seductive palette of video effects. Riggs dared to speak the words that would conjure a life into being: “Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act.”

Steve Seid
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Marlon Riggs
  • Joseph Beam
  • Chris Harris
  • Reginald Jackson
  • Steve Langley
  • Alan Miller
  • Donald Woods
Cinematographer
  • Marlon Riggs
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 55 mins
Source
  • Frameline
Preceded By

Dottie Gets Spanked

Todd Haynes, United States, 1993

A gently comedic work concerns the awakening of identity within a “six-and-three-quarter-year-old” suburban boy named Stevie.

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 30 mins
source
  • UCLA Film & Television Archive
Additional Info
  • Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Sundance Institute

Decodings

Michael Wallin, United States, 1988

Found footage reveals both autobiographical overtones and societal undertones.

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 16mm
  • 15 mins
source
  • Canyon Cinema

Fireworks

Kenneth Anger, United States, 1947

A torch of salvation from the isolation of social norms.

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W/Color
  • 35mm
  • 13 mins
source
  • UCLA Film & Television Archive
Additional Info
  • Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by The Film Foundation

Seascape

Mike Kuchar, United States, 1984

For Mike Kuchar it is “making love to somebody you can’t have . . . with the camera.”

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 10 mins
source
  • Michelle Silva
source
  • Mike Kuchar