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Tongues Untied
A polemical, avowedly personal video documentary on the American Black gay experience. Marlon Riggs celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of poet Essex Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men dancing, and various comic riffs.
Made, in the director’s own words, to “shatter the nation’s brutalising silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” this radical blend of documentary and performance defies the stigmas surrounding Black gay sexuality in the belief that, as long as shame prevails, liberation cannot be possible. Tongues Untied gives voice to what it means to live in both a Black community rife with homophobia and a predominantly white gay subculture poisoned by racism.
A lightning rod in the culture wars of the 1980s that incited a right-wing furor over public funding for the arts, the film has lost none of its life-affirming resonance today. As a character says in the film: “If in America a Black is the lowest of the low, what is a gay Black?”
Bio Marlon Riggs
Marlon Riggs (19571994) was an American filmmaker, professor, poet, and gay rights activist. He made several television documentaries, such as Tongues Untied (1989) and Black is... Black Ain’t (1994). Riggs created aesthetically innovative and socially provocative films that examine representations of race and sexuality in America.
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- This film was #37 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025