Boys Go To Jupiter
$11.50
Dir. Marlon Riggs
1989, USA, 55 min
Rated 18A
The seminal documentary on Black gay life, Emmy Award-winning director Marlon Riggs’ 1989 Tongues Untied uses poetry, personal testimony, rap, and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others), to describe the homophobia and racism that confront Black gay men.
The stories are fierce examples of homophobia and racism: the man refused entry to a gay bar because of his color; the college student left bleeding on the sidewalk after a gay-bashing; the loneliness and isolation of the drag queen. Yet they also affirm the Black gay male experience: protest marches, smoky bars, “snap diva”, humorous “musicology” and Vogue dancers.
A quarter of a century after its release, director Marlon Riggs’ documentary, winner of the Los Angeles Film Critics Award, and Best Documentary prize at the Berlin Film Festival, is as relevant as ever.
Generously sponsored by IATSE 856 Manitoba.
There has never been a filmmaker like Marlon Riggs: an unapologetic gay Black man who defied a culture of silence and shame to speak his truth with resounding joy and conviction. An early adopter of video technology, Riggs employed a bold mix of documentary, performance, poetry, and music in order to confront the devastating legacy of racist stereotypes, the impact of AIDS on his community, and the very definition of what it means to be Black. Bringing together four films – including his controversy-inciting queer landmark Tongues Untied and Black Is . . . Black Ain’t, the deeply personal swan song that was completed after his death at the age of thirty-seven – The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs traces the artistic and political evolution of a transformative filmmaker whose work is both an electrifying call for liberation and an invaluable historical document. (Criterion)
“My struggle has allowed me to transcend that sense of shame and stigma identified with my being a Black gay man. Having come through that fire, they can’t touch me.” – Marlon Riggs
