Tongues Untied

1991, 55 minutes
USA

Director: Marlon Riggs

The world of gay black men is often insular and lonely, fraught with the pain of rejec- tion by a mainstream society that neither understands nor tries to accept their lives. The two-edged sword of racism and homophobia cuts deep. This highly regarded film by Emmy award-winning director Marlon Riggs takes the viewer inside that world to experience its special joys and pain. Personal accounts, poetry, music, and dance are used to present voices, tongues untied, to tell of this often-muted existence. Director Marlon Riggs (1957-1994) said he intended his landmark semi-documentary film to “…shatter the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference.”