Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 89: Sat Mar 30

Tongues Untied (Riggs, 1989): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 2.15pm


The film will be followed by a discussion hosted by BFI Flare programmer Jay Bernard, with filmmaker Vivian Kleiman, poet Dean Atta and singer, writer and historian David McAlmont. This archive selection is part of the BFI Flare festival. Full details here.

Time Out review:
A polemical, avowedly personal video documentary on the American black gay experience. It's a bit of an ordeal: a barrage of images, newsreel, stories narrated to camera, poetry readings, 'Vogue' dance performance, voices and rap, which examines, with savage but poetic candour, those questions of identity, culture, history and self-expression that are most pertinent to black gays and lesbians. Are they gay first, or black first? Why have they little or no voice in the American gay movement? Riggs takes great risks: he challenges and threatens to offend all sensibilities here, gay or straight, black or white, but does so with remarkable composure, humour and positive attitude. At heart, it's a celebratory film which buzzes with intelligence, unashamed emotion, adrenalin, and that strange tenderness forged in suffering. As a character says in the film: 'If in America a black is the lowest of the low, what is a gay black?' Riggs says to black gays: stand up, speak out, tell your story; to others: listen.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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