Tongues Untied
Made, in director Marlon Riggs’s own words, to “shatter the nation’s brutalizing 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. Through music and dance, words and poetry by such pathbreaking writers as Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam—and by turns candid, humorous, and heartbreaking interviews with queer African American men—Tongues Untied gives voice to what it means to live as an outsider in both a Black community rife with homophobia and a largely 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.
Available In
Collector's Set
Collector's Set
Cast
- Essex Hemphill
- Poetry performance
- Michael Bell
- Featuring
- Djola Bernard Branner
- Ben Callet
- Gerald Davis
- Kenneth R. Dixon
- Darnell Stephens-Durio
- Larry Duckette
- Gideon Ferebee
- Brian Freeman
- AJ Honey
- Paul Horrey
- David Hunter
- Wayson R. Jones
- David Barron Kirkland
- Steve Langley
- The Lavender Lovelights
- Richard Medford
- Cornelius Moore
- Bryant Navy
- Willi Ninja
- Michael Oatis
- Bob Paris
- Christopher Prince
- Timothy Riena
- Marlon Riggs
- Ron Simmons
- Britt Tennell
- Taalib-Din Shakir
- Robert D. Taylor
Credits
- Director
- Marlon Riggs
- Produced by
- Marlon Riggs
- Photographer
- Marlon Riggs
- Editor
- Marlon Riggs
- Associate producer
- Brian Freeman
- Field producers
- Colin Robinson
- Ron Simmons
- Assistant editors
- Christiane Badgley
- Bob Paris
- Michele Zaccheo
- Additional camera
- Rick Cooper
- Nestor Davidson
- Vivian Kleiman
- Alex Langford
- Calvin Roberts
- Scott Sinkler
- Online editor
- Vince Casalaina
- Sound mix
- Mark Escott/Robert Berke Sound
- Snap! graphics
- Rupert Kinnard
- Poems and monologues written by
- Joseph Beam
- Craig Harris
- Essex Hemphill
- Reginald T. Jackson
- Steve Langley
- Alan Miller
- Marlon Riggs
- Donald Woods
